Great Wolf Lodge

  For our kids birthdays this year they received a gift certificate from the Olsons to the new Great Wolf Lodge that just opened in Scottsdale. We decided to go over Halloween instead of doing the usual trick-or-treating, and it worked out really great! It was freezing cold in Gallup over Halloween, plus the hotel offered a few fun Halloween activities for the kids. We ended up staying two nights and Meadow and Shawnie plus their kids joined us for one of the nights.
It was a nice vacation. After our school district added 2 whole weeks to the school year we had decided we would just pull our kids out of school more often, and we have! Also, skipping Halloween was a great decision, and I would be happy to have that become tradition.

We had been looking forward to this trip for a long time, as a reward for getting through the soccer season. We didn't realize when we booked the trip that we would have a soccer tournament the same week, which made things a little crazy, but it was still really fun! Wes and Jaxson even got to squeeze in 49ers game on Halloween since they were playing the Cardinals.

The hotel is super nice, we had two rooms across the hall from each other. The kids all got wolf ears when we checked in. The front lobby has activities all throughout the day. We did kids yoga, story time, and trick or treating.

There is a pool and hot tub outside, but it was actually really chilly outside. We did hit the hot tub a few times, but it was pretty lukewarm. Most of the time I stayed with Morgan and Wes did the big slides with the older kids. It was just small enough in the waterpark that as long as the kids were in pairs or groups, I wasn't worried about them, even my kids who aren't great swimmers.  So that was nice.

 
We didn't know beforehand about the trick or treating, but Milo came prepared in his astronaut costume. He knows so many facts about space, way more than I do. We went out to dinner at Chili's, came back in time for story time, and then Morgan threw up in the hallway on the way to the room. That was real great. She must have overate or something, she was totally fine after that, thankfully.

The waves would start every 15 minutes or so, and would start when the wolf howled. Morgan didn't like the waves and soon realized the wolf howl meant her quick exit.

Even though it was really pretty warm and humid inside the waterpark portion, after you got wet it was chilly. Morgan was my buddy a lot as we tried to stay warm.

There is a little kid section, but we didn't spend much time there. We rode a lot of slides, did the wave pool and lazy river a lot.

The kids played on this log for a long time, trying to knock each other off.