The signature water slide at the Great Wolf Lodge is called the Howlin’ Tornado.
Up to 4 people go on a giant tube down a slide that has a significant
drop before dumping you in the giant funnel shaped area. The raft
travels up and down the sides like a skateboarder on a half-pipe ramp.
Neither of the girls were tall enough to go on the ride but Joe and I
did go on it while the girls watched from below.
We left right after caroling practice on Wednesday for Great Wolf Lodge. It is only 82 miles from Issaquah but due to holiday traffic it took us over 4 hours to get there. Monti must have asked “When will we get there?” thirty times before Joe told her no more. Once there we were able to play in the water park for an hour before heading to bed. The girls thought they were so special sleeping in their own private Wolf Den in our room. It contained bunk beds and their own personal TV to watch the Disney channel on. Of course they slept in those wonderful bunk beds for about 2 hours only before joining us in our queen sized bed.
On our trip down to Great Wolf Lodge we waited to eat until we got to Centralia, WA. Why Centralia? That is the location of the closest Burgerville to Seattle. Burgerville has become one of Joe’s favorite stops on his business trips to Portland. I am guessing that many people feel the same way Joe does because the small fast food restaurant was absolutely packed Wednesday evening (compared to the other fast food chains nearby their location). Burgerville focuses on being a healthy and eco-friendly fast food chain. The 39 restaurants in the chain use locally produced foods, use biodegradable containers, do food composting, and use only wind power credits for their energy use. They won me over instantly because they had 2 different homemade veggie burgers that were both very tasty.
Each kindergarten class came to the feast dressed as a different
Thanksgiving character. Dahlia’s class came dressed as Indians. They
joined kids dressed as pilgrims and turkeys to sing a couple songs for
the parents after they were done eating.
I worked with several other parents for an hour getting all the food
ready for the feast. It took so long to cut up all the fruit for the
fruit salad and it killed me when they poured in marshmallows and Cool
Whip on top of all of our perfectly good fruit. In the end, the kids hardly
touched the marshmallow/Cool-Whip/fruit but the popcorn was devoured.
I went in to school to help Dahlia’s class make owls out of clay. At first I was worried we didn’t have enough parent volunteers but the kids did really great with the project. The biggest issue was making sure the kids didn’t press too hard on the clay when making their patterns on the body. We can’t wait to see what they will look like after they are dried, glazed, and fired in the kiln.
We had our first practice and organizational meeting for the school
caroling group. A group of 50 students will be performing
Christmas carols at a two of the assisted living homes in Issaquah.
The woman organizing the group had a subset of us over to her
house to figure things out before the entire group would practice together.
Monti is one of the kids singing a solo. She is doing the first verse
of “When Christmas Comes to Town” from The Polar Express movie.
Dahlia’s class was getting ready for Thanksgiving by studying Native American culture over the last month. It looks like they were doing some type of cave drawings with the kids. All the kids had different stories that went along with their stick figure drawings. I found it interesting that Dahlia’s story is so focused on the Indians choice of food including bunny rabbits, snakes, porcupines, and a cow.
After the musical I took the Dahlia, Monti and her friend Samantha out to dinner. We had a good discussion about all the fun elements of putting together a play including everyone’s favorite – costume design. All I heard about was how much they loved the full yellow gown that Belle wore during the show.
I took the girls and Monti’s friend Samantha to see Beauty and the Beast at the Village Theater in downtown Issaquah. It was an excellent performance. We all enjoyed it so much — especially the tap dancing salt and pepper sequence during the song “Be Our Guest.” The man who played Gaston was perfect.