Last Summer Vacation

I've been a real slacker lately. It's hard to get going on blogging when you know you have a bazillion pictures to upload. Consider yourself for warned.

Before we took off for our last vaca of the summer, we crashed the Flake family reunion. Mark's Uncle and Aunt and all their kids (Mark's first cousins) had a reunion here in Vancouver and they were kind enough to let us crash their party for a couple of days. We got to see Grandma Ray lovingly known to our kids as shaky grandma. That really was a highlight. We miss the Ray's a ton. The Flakes are great too and we had a blast I tell you, a blast!!!

After the reunion we headed up to Great Wolf Lodge. I've posted about this place before when we went last November. This trip was a gift from KCI for when Mark won the award for manager of the year. We got this package deal for 3 nights and about 4 days at this really fun indoor water park resort. Included in the package was:

pedicures and manicures for the girls (ice cream, t-shirts, tiaras and mugs included)...



a Magi-Quest came and wand and belt for Kenny. Kenny is seen here playing with his friend Liam from our ward who happened to be at the resort for two of the days we were.

Breakfast was included in the package. We stuffed ourselves with a plethora of food each morning. :)

And of course...the Water Park!!! Here is a picture from up top while we were waiting for one of the big rides.
A bird's eye few of the wave pool.
Another fun thing to note is this big bucket of water that dumped every few minutes. When I was finally warm and wet enough to not mind the splashing, I finally stood under it. It almost hurt with how much water splashed down at once.

The highlight was the BIG slides; one where the whole family could go down in one raft together...

and the Tornado. Lauren wasn't tall enough so she patiently waited in a chair while the rest of us went down. Carley swears she will NEVER go down it again. Hopefully you can get some of the experience from the embarrassing video below. If not, a description and a picture are included in my post from last November. The part where you hear me screaming is when the BIG drop in the slide is. It really isn't as dark in the tube as it appears though I hear it is at night. Unfortunately I couldn't get anyone to go down with me in the dark and I didn't want to go down with strangers. Mark had gotten sick on day two and could only handle so much in a day. In fact, the last two days he didn't even get in the water. :(

There where two equally fun but smaller rides that Kenny and Carley could go down by themselves on tubes. Lauren was too short but still enjoyed going down with me. Below is a picture of Carley and I exiting one of these slides.

There was also a fun pool with various activities to participate in. One is the lily pad crossing seen below.







Carley wasn't daring enough to try it but she had fun shooting hoops with her dad.

There were various toys to climb onto.

If you ask the kids what their favorite part was, they would all agree it was the wave pool. First up is a picture of them just getting in on the very first day. I'm not sure I ever saw them dry after this!

One thing we enjoy was this new water camera Mark just had to have. I agree that it came in quite handy as it took all the pictures and the video while we were there.







Lauren doing flips.



Carley in a hand stand.


This place is amazing and we already can't wait to go back!