And the pack begins...

Last Wednesday Julius' boss said that Julius needed to take Friday off and take a break, so I thought that would be a wonderful time to repaint our new place... but then Thursday morning Julius called and said that his boss was going to pay for our hotel, where did we want to go?? Wow! So some of the other MOMS Club members had said Great Wolf Lodge was good, so Julius booked a room and his boss paid the bill :) So we drove up Friday morning, with the kids being highly bored in the back seat (Julius did a good job of entertaining them). It's about an hour and a half drive, but on the way up Julius and I were looking at some of the other towns for possibly buying a house there instead of Vancouver. When we got there it was a little chilly and the kids were grouchy from the car ride.. but then they realized we were going to stay there and they saw all neat things in the lobby. So we unloaded the car and went up to our room where the kids had there own little 'den'. It was so cute because their room had little wolf cubs on the wall and a pretend rock wall partition. Plus bunk beds and their own TV. It was really a neat place to stay.

After getting settled we went and ate lunch, then donned our bathing suits and headed to the water park. It was great fun, most of it is geared towards kids so the girls had a blast, Adrianne even went down the big kid slide twice (despite her terrified look at the bottom when she went under water). The girls both had little life jackets, but I'm not sure if they really helped. Adrianne went underwater on her back and couldn't get back upright so she was just kinda bobbing under water. Then another time she tripped and fell so she was bobbing on her stomach and she couldn't get her head up high enough to be above water. But we were close enough that we snatched her out of the water quickly. So don't think that a life jacket will save your child from drowning, it could actually hold them under water (especially at a small age when the jacket is stronger then they are).

Alexa on the other hand, said 'no way' to all the slides, so I went down with her on one of the kiddy ones and at the bottom I accidently landed on her ankle, so that made her cry.. Luckily the kids love water so they bucked up and continued to play. There was an awesome wave section that Alexa liked to play in, it reminded me of the ocean.

Julius and I took turns going on the big people slides. I screamed bloody murder, but admit that they were very fun. Julius had a good time too. After all the water fun we went back and got some real clothes and headed to the craft area where the kids made pirate hats (but we forgot to get them before we left.. oops!) then it was onto the arcade where Julius went crazy with the tickets, we had over 500 by the time we finished. And poor nieve us, I saw a sign that said "Scan your wrist band and recieve $5 in tokens" We thought we would recieve a complimentary $5 of tokens for each wrist band, so we scanned once each. Then to see what would happen we each scanned again... it was then that I re-read the sign.... and noticed that I had misinterpreted the meaning. It meant that we could get $5 of tokens to be BILLED to our room.. Oops. Obviously we have never stayed in anything quite so fancy before.

After we redeemed our tickets for prizes we went to the lobby where there was a puppet show and a bedtime story (this is where I realized that most of the kids were already in their pajamas). After the story we went to eat dinner :) It was buffet style so the kids had a good time picking what they wanted, Julius let Alexa get a slice of pizza and when she got back to our table a man came over and said "she dropped it." I thought he meant she dropped something on the floor, then I realized she dropped her pizza and picked it back up... Yum.. After that little mishap we had a nice long dinner, finished off with some ice cream.

The next morning we got up and went to the Childrens Museum in Olympia, it was fun. It is a small space, but they really have alot of things in it. The girls had a good time, and they think that the capitol building is a "castle" with princesses in it.

On the way home I tried to get Julius to stop at the outlet mall in Centralia.. The conversation went like this:

Julius: "Here comes the outlet mall."
Me: "ooh, lets stop for a minute."
Julius: "We don't have time."
Me: "But I have to go potty."
Julius: "haha, good try."

So about 20 minutes later I again asked if we could stop so I could go potty, and he said, "Ohh, I thought you just wanted to go shopping!"

(Which ofcourse I did, but I still had to go potty too!)

Sunday we went to grandma's house, then it was off to Lowes to get some wallpaper remover. Then we had my Aunts over for dinner. At which time I started packing. So today Julius took the car to work and here I am packing some more. It's really not as easy as I thought. We have so much stuff, I just want to toss it. The kids too, I packed two suitcases and two boxes, of just their CLOTHES!! And I still have two loads in the washer - to get us through to the end of the month. I asked Julius, "How did we accumulate so much stuff?!" To which he said, "Well stop shopping." - HA, that is not an option!! There has to be some sort of happy medium.

So wish me luck on the packing, I still have my homework to do too.. And shutterfly offered me a free book so I am trying to finish that up before the cut off.. Here's to a day of progress :)