The Barney Family: Great Wolf Lodge

We took a few days off for a little family vacation at the Great Wolf Lodge. We have been wanting to come here since the Farmer's went last summer and had such a great time. We happened to find a Groupon which made it a little less expensive (still very spendy though) so we went for it. It was great to have the family together for some fun. The younger kids loved it. The older kids liked it as well, but for them two days of Great Lodge was more than enough. We stocked our hotel room with lots of tasty stuff that we normally don't get, and the kids swam and ate and swam some more. There was some T.V. watching in there too. They discovered the novelty of having channels, and they clicked through them repeatedly. The first night they found Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and watched that. (not my favorite- Geoff teases me about this one because Blueberry Girl gave me nightmares when I was a child)
We also brought some board games. That part didn't go as well. These kids don't enjoy board games as well as my generation. I think video games have helped to ruin that. They don't seem to have much patience in the learning of new board games. Yatzee was a dismal failure, which ended with me giving up and kicking them out of my room for a while while I steamed. Geoff tried again with Rummikub and had better success. He was determined that the kids participate in my dream of family game time. I sometimes feel like giving up that tradition, but I haven't let go quite yet. I have too many great memories of playing games with my own siblings, my grandmother, and sometimes my dad. The extended Barney family always enjoyed a good game of Hearts, Settlers, and now Dominion. Good times.

Anyway, this was a nice getaway. I'm glad we did it. After the hotel, we visited a couple of Church sites, the temple site in Independence and Liberty Jail. I'd been both places before, but Geoff hadn't. He enjoyed the little tour.

The hot tub for families was a popular place to hang out.

Annalisa has started to make some progress in learning how to swim. She just started to put her head under the water. Finally! We will keep working on this, and hopefully by the end of summer, she'll be a little swimmer.