Great Wolf Lodge

Hello again everyone! So sorry that it has been a couple weeks since my last post! It has been getting quite crazy around here! Let me catch you all up!

Since the last posting we had a nice visit from the Nelson's. We had a good time with them and took some family photos:

We even took a nice tip to the Natural Science Museum here in Raleigh. Here's Olivia checking out the deer exhibit:



Here we are in the bat cave . .


Then last weekend we were invited to go out of town with our friends Randy, Sara and Gracie. We all decided to visit the Great Wolf Lodge up in Williamsburg, VA. It is a water park inside a hotel! How cool is that! They even had a toddler area for the girls to play in!

We had gotten a room with 2 queen beds and a living room area separated by a half wall. I (with Sara's help) came up with a brilliant idea to create a fort (of sorts) to separate the girls pack-n-plays so they wouldn't be able to see each other at night so *maybe* we'd be able to get some sleep at night. We were also hoping that by hiding them behind the half wall from us with the TV in between, we would keep them asleep when we were up past them at night, too. At least that was the plan!

It actually managed to work! Most of the time we tried to get Gracie to sleep first (since she slept like a rock once she was asleep! But we even managed to get them to go to sleep at the same time once for a nap - amazing what wearing them down at a water park can do! (like my craftsmanship?? - my dad would be soo proud!)

Anyway, we had a really good time - but let's just say that this is NOT what you'd call a *relaxing* vacation! Even the car-ride was a chore! We all crammed in my Honda Pilot. It can seat up to 8 (that is sans-luggage). SO needless to say, with luggage (especially packing for 2 toddlers, it was very tight for the 6 of us!). Since we had TWO car seats and they had to be on each side of the middle seat leaving almost no room for an adult person to sit in between (hence the reason Sara and I had to trade off that seat). The other of us had to trade off the single seat in the third row (which, by the way, you could only get to by climbing in through the trunk - over the luggage - since you couldn't fold down a seat with the car seats in the middle row!). Yeah, not a ride for the claustrophobic! But we made it there and back!

Here are some fun pics and videos of the trip.

Gracie has a bit of a shoe fetish - here she is helping Olivia with her shoes:

Here's Sara posing with the girls in their cherry swimsuits:

Here's a video for Americas Funniest Home Videos. The girls really enjoyed running up and down the REALLY long hallways to and from the water park. Just watch what happens to poor little Gracie as she tried to catch up with Olivia:

Here's at the Water Park in the toddler area. There was a toddler water slide and Olivia LOVED it! She even learned the word "Slide" to ask to go down it again and again. Every time she was up there she had a huge grin on her face! What a little dare devil she is! Gracie wasn't quite as sure about it as Olivia was, but still had a good time (once she was part of the way down on it!)

While the girls were playing in the toddler area, us adults traded off to go do the big kid rides and have a good time, too. Sara and I had a good time on the Tornado! We even got to take the girls on one of the bigger water slides later in the day - but no-one told us that they turn the lights out in them at night! Both girls still did really well on the ride, even with the lights out for the little bit of it that was dark. The ride was a more gentle tube ride and Olivia was a pretty big dare devil anyway. I'm sure she would have liked it a lot more in the daylight - but still seemed to be ok even in the dark.

Splish Splash!

The last morning there Sara and I managed to sneak away from the guys and get some pedicures from the hotel spa! Ahhh that was nice! Then we all went down to the hotel arcade after we checked out - to play around a little more before we left. The girls had a really fun time on this one little car:

It was really fun to see the girls hanging out like little friends now that they are getting old enough to really interact with one another. Can't wait until they are old enough to go back and do some of the bigger kid stuff.

Ok, so to catch you all up on all the other stuff that has been going on with me . . . so I told you all that they were closing my division at work, right . . . well, last Thursday (right before labor day), I was laid off of work! No worries, though! I knew it was going to happen at some point and we had a plan in place for when it happened. My group at work and I more or less saw this coming and had been working on a back-up plan for a little while now anyway, so when this all started happening, we just had to move our plans up. We managed to find a company (out of NJ) that was willing to fund us to open an office down here. So, needless to say, I have already accepted another job offer to work for the same boss (he was going to be out of a job, too!) at a company called Vantage Consulting Group doing pretty much the same thing (though, I'm going to be getting a promotion out of all of this mess!) and we'll be opening an office here in Raleigh. So, sorry that I haven't told all of you guys, but I didn't want to worry you all until it was all settled. (besides, I even had another interview with another company last week for a different job - which I turned down - as a backup) - so everything here is going to be fine. I should be starting back up to work sometime this coming week.

So that is the main reason I haven't blogged - they took my laptop and that was my main source of blogging (I hate my desktop - it is slow and I don't like hanging out in the room it is in for as long as it takes to upload pics!) so sorry!

So now that you all are up to date and hopefully I'll be getting a new work laptop soon, I can start blogging more often again soon! Until then, keep in touch!