A Howlin' Good Time

Friday morning our family started our 5 hour road trip to Washington for our much anticipated trip

Once we were checked in at "The Great Wolf Lodge" we went straight for our room, put on our bathing suits and spent the next 3 hours in the water park

We were so tired and waterlogged after that we went to one of their on site restaurants for supper, where they served dinner in these cute buckets (isn't that such a cute idea? I think I may use it for a birthday party or something)The kids were so exhausted they went straight to bed and we all slept for NINE hours straight!!The BEST thing about the Great Wolf Lodge is that it is all about the kids. I especially love the "Kid's Kabin" the kids got to sleep in. They had a bunk bed and day bed in the little room with their OWN TV!! Could you imagine anything more exciting?Saturday morning we headed back to the water park for another 3.5 hours.
Abby and Ethan enjoyed some water wars




Look up!
Watch out!

My monkey boy!
He's a lean machine!
They had something for every age level. You can't see in the pictures I posted, but there are 2 medium water slides, 2 big waterslides with rafts, 2 waterslides for tubes, and a wave pool in addition to the pictures I took. I particularly loved the "Howlin' Tornado" it was like nothing I had ever been on before... and SO fun.
This trip totally wore us out (in a good way of course :D) We'd love to do it again some time and think it would be even more fun with friends... so who's up for going with us next year??

Sportsmen (in training)

Last Thursday our family decided it would be fun to go to the

and it did not disappoint.

We spent the first hour in a "Survival" lecture from Peter Kumerfeldt (his website is here.)

He had some awesome information and I bought a few of his super duper orange plastic bags. If he's ever in your area, I would go and/or check out his website.

After the survival lecture it was off to paint duck decoys Although I'm not quite sure what we're going to do with them now that they are done.

Then is was off to the trout pond

Abby was first to snag a fish and bring it in


You can tell from the look on her face what she thought of the fish :D

Elise caught a couple too, and decided to keep one.

(Samantha looks equally excited as Abby about the fish)
Then it was Ethan's turn to catch one

Sadly, Ethan's fish got away from him before he could land it. He had 2 more bites that came close to landing, but got away. He was so disappointed and upset.

Then finally....
SUCCESS!!

and he throoughly enjoyed his catch!!

The whole 4 hours we were there was great, and we didn't even get to see and do a bunch of the stuff I wanted to. We will have to go earlier next year. It was such a blast!

Another highlight of our trip was getting a quail caller. Ethan has been practicing his "Che KEE ta's", so soon we will have to go out in the field and see if he can't attract a covey.

FUN! FUN!

CAUTION: Wild animal

There was a wild animal trapped and making a terrible noise in Abby's room a few weeks ago. It was like nothing I had heard before, so I took some video of it

After 20 min. when the noise finally calmed down and we checked in the room we found the animal had escaped and only Abby was left in the room. Strange! Don't know what it could have been... sometimes is sounds like a leopard, other times a chimpanzee.

Hope the wild animal doesn't find it's way into your child's bedroom. BEWARE!!

Ignite Bend

On Feb 12 Brad and I went to an event called "Ignite Bend" I am sure that if you look into your local area you will find an "Ignite" chapter/meeting going on somewhere near you.

I was intrigued by the format and thought it might me somewhat mentally stimulating and entertaining, and I was right. The room was filled with mostly yoga, java loving granolas, but it was great to be amongst a different group of people doing something different.

The premise of an Ignite gathering is:

"If you had five minutes to talk, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Launch a web site? Teach a hack? Talk about recent learnings, successes, failures?"

Some of the presentations were good, some were lame, but the best part of it is... if you don't like it, don't worry, it'll be over in 5 minutes and you go on to someone else.

If you go to the Ignite O'Reilly website there is a lot of info on what this event is, what it's about and has a calendar of Ignite shows near you- find your inner geek and go!!

Brad and I are trying to think of something to present... do you have any ideas?

Baroque Festival

On Feb 14th Samantha was part of the Baroque Festival at the local community college and performed with about 7 other girls her age or older. She entered the "non-competitive" division since she has never performed solo before. She knew she would be nervous and entering the "non-competitive" division allowed her to have her music with her, and gave her some experience performing on her own.

She did a great job and we are very proud of her. We taped the whole performance for your viewing/listening pleasure :-D

Skating Finale

The kids finished up their skating lessons this week. They can all make it around the rink safely now and feel a degree of confidence in their abilities (some more than others)

On Abby's last skate lesson, Frosty and Mrs. Snowberry came to visit and talk to the kiddos.

Abby got her ribbon for completing "Tikes 2" Way to go Abby!!




Elise worked very hard during practice to be able to do her crossovers to pass level 2
a
Samantha and Ethan were a bit less willing to not have both feet firmly on the ground and got "Participation" ribbons.
Ice skating can't be everyone's "thing", right??



Nice job Kiddos!

Bryans take on Bachelor

On Feb 6 Brad's brother Benji and his wife Shawna flew into town to go skiing for the weekend. So Saturday morning just Brad and I headed up to Bachelor with Benji and Shawna. It was nice to leave the kids behind and not have to worry if they were cold or hurt, or waiting for them to get down the hill. We spent awhile together going down one of the little hills and just before lunch Benji and I left Brad and Shawna to go explore some other runs the novices could go down.

It was a beautiful day: little wind, blue skies, warm temps and not bad snow. They couldn't have picked a better weekend!!

Brothers
Brad in his crash helmet :-)
After lunch Benji and I scouted out a few more runs and then took Brad and Shawna up one of the bigger chairs, and they made it down... eventually. I think their confidence is better now, and next time they'll conquer that run like it was nothing :D
It wasn't really until the end of the day when I finally kinda got my groove back. I figured a really hadn't been skiing "for myself" since I've been married because I was helping Brad learn how to ski, or my kids. It was exhilarating to be out there again and can't wait to go back!