We took a long weekend, small vacation since we have never taken one before. (Grandma's house doesn't count.) Four or five months ago, I booked a room in a resort that is kid friendly and has indoor and outdoor water activities: Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine. A few of my friends had been there already, so I had their stamp of approval on the place. This is what I saw driving up. Squee!
I made sure to get one of the Wolf Den Suites which had an in-room "cave" for Allison to have all to herself. She really liked the fact that it was colorful, had a bunk bed, and was all hers. She even had her own tv.
Then of course we had to go eat because we were starving by the time we had everything set up. The resort has all kinds of places to eat so you don't have to leave if you don't want to. There's even a Starbucks inside! We enjoyed Camp Critter Bar & Grill a few times.
After dinner, we headed over to check out the water park. It had lots of things to play on for the whole family and it was HUGE! Allison was able to play for an hour that night and then most of the next day.
She was wary about the slides, but once she looked around and went down them a few times, she couldn't be stopped. Her favorite part by far, however, was the wave pool that had waves in intervals every 5 minutes. She liked to jump over the waves and float over them as she repeated "up and down, up and down." We spent a little bit of time in the outdoor pool, but not a lot. The main draw for this place was not having to put copious amounts of sunscreen on my poor white child.
By the next day, we wanted to get away from the water and try something else. We purchased tickets for the Sea Life Aquarium, which was only a mile or two down the road. Allison has always liked sea life.
There were several rescued turtles at the aquarium. This one had two of its legs bitten off and one was severely mangled. Not sure how it moved around, but at least it was in a safe place.
There were some huge stingrays in this tank. Allison talked about their "tails" a lot.
She liked that she was able to get inside this tank and look around.
This was a 360 degree tunnel tank so you could view the fish on all sides, even under your feet. It was pretty cool, although it reminded me of a scene from Jaws. Thankfully the sharks in this area were not very large.
Allison was able to touch a starfish. This one is called a chocolate chip sea star because of the dark brown bumps on its surface that look like little chocolate chips.
And of course, her favorite is always the jellyfish. We stood there awhile until she had watched them for as long as she wanted.
At the end of the tour was a small play scape for kids. She thought it was ok, but wanted to go back in and see the fish again.
Back at the resort, they had story time every night at 8:00pm. Someone reads a story, there are some songs, and all the characters come out and interact with the kids. Then they teach the kids how to do the Great Wolf howl. We only went one night because the children were encouraged to be loud and Allison didn't like that.
She did like her wolf ears though. She looked so cute in them! She liked them so much, she even wanted to wear them to dinner.
One of Allison's favorite cookies is a chocolate chip M&M cookie. When she saw the M&M cookie in front of the sweet shop, I had to take a picture. The sweet shop had ice cream, cupcakes, cookies, brownies, fudge, and lots of other unhealthy stuff that people should eat when they're on vacation.
Since I'm always the one taking pictures, I hardly get to be in them. So I sat down with Allison on the last day and had Mark take a picture of us together in front of the big window where you can see the indoor water area. (I've been told the new iPhone has a better camera, so here's hoping.)
We'd had a fun-filled 4 days packed with activities and pool time. I wouldn't say that Allison was ready to go, but she was definitely worn out.
We definitely want to go back again soon!
