What a great week! We started at the Great Wolf Lodge, hung out with some old friends (drank lots of yummy wine and some even yummier varieties of oatmeal stout beer), saw a magic show, saw How to Train Your Dragon (in 3D, of course), went for a bike ride & to a park, got the pond & stream working in our backyard, found the first tick of the season on me (we haven’t had very many tick encounters in Minnesota – this was rare even though ticks used to LOVE me), and ended our week with perfect weather.
The Great Wolf was fun as always. E & Wendy came up from Lafayette so it was great to hang out. I thought maybe on Easter that there would be less people – but no, it was the busiest we’ve ever seen it. Somehow the Easter Bunny still found us – in our hotel room and in the water park. The younger kids got to find eggs in the play structure area and the big kids got to find eggs all over the entire water park – there were eggs everywhere.
E & Wen brought an extra kid – you should see the photo after this one when I had everyone make crazy faces.
We went to Jeremy Allen’s Grand Illusions show. They started the show with funky music and these native-type people came out on stage in grass skirts and big masks and were pounding on drums while they moved around. They didn’t do any tricks but just got the show started. After that Jeremy Allen did all sorts of cool tricks and amazing illusions – it was really a pretty good show. Afterwards I asked the kids what their favorite part was – Colleen liked when they put a lady in a box and then made her head move all around separate from her body. I forget what Christopher liked, but when I asked Megan she so cutely said “the dancing monkeys”. Everytime I think about her saying that it gets me laughing all over again…so innocent and sweet 🙂
After four years we have our Dells routine pretty set. We typically go to the Moosejaw restaurant. Beth can’t resist sampling the 10 microbrews they offer there so I go along for the ride and try to enjoy myself. When we were driving home from the Moosejaw a year ago that’s when Dan called me to say they just had their baby…not sure what all I said to him then but I’m sure it wasn’t my proudest tipsy moment. You can’t leave there without everyone wearing antlers…maybe next year we’ll ask directions on the proper way to wear them.
The Great Wolf used to have this awesome 4-story air gun area where you blasted each other with nerf balls. They replaced the guns and balls this year with MagiQuest . You pay crazy amounts of money for a wand that sort of works and then go on quests and adventures. The game actually isn’t all that bad once you start playing – Colleen and Christopher both did good at it while Megan was just happy running around and around and around. After we completed our quests we then had various spells (e.g., freeze, lightening, protection) so we could go on adventures and try to kill a dragon or goblin. We decided our first adventure would be to kill the goblin. You’re supposed to use your lightening spell to kill the goblin but my theory is that somehow Colleen mixed up her spells and used freeze instead because the video screen completely froze as she was casting her spell (and she was beating him too) and…they couldn’t fix it…and it was broken for over a day (for all the kids)…don’t mess with Colleen’s magic powers – she is a Master Magi!!!
Ok – here’s the quiz…quick, find Beth in this picture:
Did you find her? The correct answer is “no, she’s not in this picture”. If that wasn’t your answer then please keep that to yourself. Another correct answer would have been “I forgot to look for Beth because I was so distracted by Arnold Schwarzenegger standing next to Christopher”.
Can’t wait to see some of you in a few weeks. The weather is beautiful here – sunny, 60’s and 70’s, and the days are getting longer.