Our Trip to Dallas

I know it's been a while since I've posted. Things have been pretty busy around here. After Charity Ball we had Thanksgiving (which was at our house) and then we had to get ready for our trip to Dallas for our friends Keith & Stacey's wedding (Jason was the best man, Zachary was the ring bearer, Addison was the flower girl, and I was a nervous wreck). More on that later. We decided to go up to Dallas a few days early and meet my parents at the Great Wolf Lodge. If you've never been you really should find the closest one to you and go. They have an indoor water park and is the coolest hotel we've ever stayed at. I'm so happy that my parents came down to share this experience with us. I hardly ever get to see them so it was really nice spending time together. I was very nervous for the drive. Zach is so easy in the car now but I remember how he was at Addison's age. Despite a rocky start (after driving for 35 minutes I realized that I forgot Addison's flower girl dress - as well as her blanky that she doesn't like to sleep without - needless to say we had to turn around) the drive could have been a lot worse. Addie fussed here and there but really did pretty good. Thanks to a lot of DVDs, toys and snacks. She only napped for 20 minutes so she really did well. Here she is on the drive there (happy she has her blanky)...

Zachary is at such a good age. He's so much fun and understands reason. He did so well on the drive there.

When we got to the hotel the kids were obviously VERY happy to be out of the car. When we got to our room Zachary was running around like a crazy man. Here he is celebrating on the couch.
They have the neatest rooms at this hotel. Zachary got his own little bunk bed room. He was so happy. He rubbed the wall and said, "Oh I love this hotel."He had his own TV!On Thursday Grandma and Grandpa Lilly weren't schedule to arrive till later in the morning. Since Addison got up at the crack of dawn (which meant we all got up at the crack of dawn since we were all sleeping in the same room) we had some time to kill before the water park opened at nine. It just so happened to be Zachary's 5th birthday!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY Z!!! We let him open up the presents we brought. As you can see in the bottom of the picture Addison is eyeing the present that is wrapped in Elmo wrapping paper (she loves Elmo).

She tried running away from Zachary with the present but Daddy caught her.
I asked Zach to smile and this is what I got.

Finally it was 9am so we got on our swimsuits. Giving Daddy a big hug before we head out.

Addie had to give big brother a hug too.

And here it is! It is such a neat water park. The big bucket up top fills with water and dumps it out when it gets to the top. Wish I had a picture of the water coming out.

Unfortunately my photography skills aren't all that great yet. I couldn't figure out how to get a better picture of this area. The sun was coming in from the windows and messed up the flash. This is the toddler area. In the back there are small water slides that Addison had a ball going down herself. Zachary went down them too but they were a bit slow for him.

Here is the wave pool. Jason was unfortunate to see a child go under, come back up and then throw up from swallowing too much water. He immediately picked up Addie and got out of there.
This is a side view of that first picture. You have to walk up all these steps to get up to the top to slide down. That is nothing compared to the adult slide stairs.
Here is the adult slides. Of course older kids can go on them too but unfortunately Zach wasn't quite tall enough. Jason and I went on them first. There is one that is called the Howlin' Tornado. You can see pictures of the water slides here. It was a lot of fun but kind of scary. You have to have at least two people on the raft (maximum four at a time). Thankfully Jason went down backwards the first time we went. You go through this dark tunnel and then suddenly drop almost straight down and then go into this 6 story funnel that swishes you up like 30 feet from side to side before going back into the tunnel and out into the pool. We went on that a couple of times and then I went on it with my dad. He had tried to get my mom to go on it and afterwards said he was thankful she didn't! But I ended up going down backwards that time with him and I literally thought we were going to tip over. We were basically vertical when we went down that drop. Very scary.
This is another fun one that they call the toilet bowl. It's actually called the Cannon bowl but it's like going into a toilet bowl.

After we got done swimming we decided to open Christmas gifts. Here are Addie and Grandma having a tea party.

Zachary playing with his rocket ship.

I walked around and took some pictures of the hotel. Well really just the lobby and the Ice Cream parlor. The lobby was beautiful.

Here is the Ice Cream parlor where they had ice cream (of course) and lot of other treats. My favorite was the giant no bake cookies.

That night we hung out in the room. We were all pretty tired. It really was a fun day. I'm so happy that Zachary got to spend his 5th birthday at the Great Wolf Lodge with Grandma and Grandpa Lilly! On Friday morning Zach and Grandpa went to the water park again while Jason and I loaded up the car and Addison and went to the other hotel to get ready for the wedding rehearsal. I will post about that next.