Great Wolf Lodge

The weekend before Christmas, we stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City with Cayden and family.  The kids had THE BEST TIME!  The parents spent a great deal of time reminiscing about how vacations used to be. ;)  My how things have changed...

We arrived Saturday afternoon and headed straight for the indoor waterpark!

corralling the fab four for a pic is quite the task

These two.  Truly best friends.  I love how they just pick up right where they left off.  And they do things like this hand-holding without us prompting them to.  It really was a better vacation with them there...Millie and Cayden play great together and entertain each other.  Syd and Beck got to know each other better and shared food at meal times.  I imagine they'll be version 2.0.

telling a story

Syd's favorite place was the cupcake shop.  No surprise there ;)  girl enjoys some cake.  At breakfast, she loved the mini muffins and kept asking for "mo cake".

Beckham is the best picture poser and is always happy to say cheese.  He's also the fastest little runner I've ever seen.  He has these cute little bow legs, and he sprints everywhere.  He's thin and wiry...future athlete, for sure.

I bought the fab four some BFF shirts and attempted a posed photo, which never ends well.

...but thanks to Amanda's help, we got some cute shots.

Syd was not cooperating at all.  Beck sure was though...

Cayden is so silly and absolutely cracks me up.

This is what went on most of the time...running the halls.

For dinner Sunday night, we took the kids to the nearby T-Rex cafe.  Surprisingly, it took Millie awhile to warm up to the dinosaurs.  Once we got to our table, she was fine and had a great time being silly with Cayden.

For dessert, they got to "paint" their rice krispie treats in the shape of dinos.

After dinner, we stayed up late to attend the story time in the lobby.  It was packed and a fun experience.  It even snowed during one of the songs.  Millie and Cayden stood up the whole time dancing and putting on a show...and even shared their first kiss in front of the audience.  I wasn't watching, so I'm not sure who made the first move. ;)

In an extremely disappointing turn of events, my disposable water camera was a dud.  When I went to pick up the prints, none of them were usable...all blacked out.  They gave me a CD of the images and I was able to lighten up a few of them...but they are still terrible quality and you can't see the cuteness going on.  Bummer.

Cayden and Beckham can swim year round in Brazil, so they are little fishies.  Cayden has to wear his goggles ;)

Syd's swimsuit might have been a bit too small.  Sorry Pid Pid.  She LOVED jumping off the side of the big pool into our arms.  She even went down the slide a few times.

Millie's confidence was definitely buoyed by Cayden's experience in the pool.  She did much more than she would've if she had only been with us.  She still won't go under water, but she loved going down the slides.

Definitely a fun weekend adventure for the kiddos!  Hope to make it an annual event...