February 2nd was our 17 year wedding anniversary.
How 'bout that? 17 years.
We celebrated with a date. Movie and dinner.
Katie decided to get me all dolled up for our date.
The best part is the heart on my neck.
Katie's science fair is coming up. I suggested a variety of topics for this year.
Cataloging the birds that visit her bird feeder......
.....a study on pandas......
.......making candy crystals.....
SOLD!
Candy won out.
Hmmmm. I wonder why?
We got to work.
Boil some water and add some sugar.....
....pour it in a jar......
....and then wait. Like, a couple of weeks.
Next up, Valentine's Day.
Valentine's always means yummy treats
This year was no exception.
Here are the kids cookie creations from Katie's class
party.....
Later on that evening, they were able to sort through all of their Valentines.
There was lots of candy, of course.
Katie ate her first nut-safe truffles. She LOVED them.
She is a true dessert connoisseur.
Mikey had a field trip to a local pizza place.
They let the kids play around with some pizza dough and flour.
Then they showed them how they spin out the dough.
Whoa.
Then, it was the kids turn.
HIIIII-YAAAAA!!
Mikey couldn't quite get the hang of the flying pizza dough.
So, he decided to make a "light saber" pizza instead.
You can always tell how great a field trip is by looking at the state of your child's clothing.
Messy = AWESOME!!!
Then, the best part of the field trip came.
IT WAS TIME TO EAT PIZZA.
FOR BREAKFAST.
Right on.
Time to check back in on our candy crystals (aka rock candy) experiment.
This is it at one weeks time.
So far, this is the only jar that has worked.
Four other jars have been tried and failed.
Hmmmph.
Crystals are hard to grow.
After all that Valentine's and pizza excitement, the kids had school vacation.
At the end of the week we traveled to The Great Wolf Lodge.
I'm gonna start off by saying that the kids ADORED this place.
Absolutely LOVED it.
The parents.....um.....not so much.
It was really expensive.
There's an indoor water park that's kept at 84 degrees.
That was pretty neat AND it's included in the price of your stay.
What was the problem, you ask?
Nothing else was.
Included, I mean.
The food was atrocious and expensive.
The resort entertainment was boring, dated and totally lame.
The games and attractions were okay, but also expensive.
We guesstimated that it cost us upwards of $600 for a one night stay.
Gulp. That's Disney prices for a not-so-Disney experience.
ANNNNNYWHOOOOOOOO...
I did mention the kids had fun, right? They did.
Here we are chilling at the water park.
Here is Katie enjoying her $400 chocolate milk.
The rooms were nifty. They had a separate little room within a room for the kids.
They were excited about the bunk bed.
Here we are killing some time in the lobby hula hooping.
One of the game options was called MagiQuest.
It was a really cool interactive magic wand game.
Of course, you had to buy the wands (and our kids chose the most expensive ones) AND then pay to play the game.
Sigh.
But it WAS super fun.
I didn't manage to take a pic of Katie with her wand (it was pink with a dragon on it - you can see it in the video).
But here is Mikey's.
We tried to find some dessert for the kids after dinner with not much success.
We're leery of getting ice cream from scoopable buckets (kinda like a Baskin Robbins type place) because of cross-contamination with nut filled ice creams.
So, we ended up getting Swedish Fish and jellybeans from the merchandise store.
The kids sat and enjoyed the audioanimatronic/musical "Clock Tower Show".
If you clicked on that link, I apologize. Wasn't that the most painful minute of your life?
There's a Native American princess that lives in a big tree.
Her name is "YellowFeather". Mikey said that her name should be "Scary".
The kids thought the show was okay.
I, as you can see from this picture, was about to throw myself off the damn clock tower.
GOD. It was horrid.
Almost as horrid as this picture, courtesy of Huzbend.
After the show, they had "story time" and then a meet-and-greet with a Lodge character.
Katie was all over that! Mikey decided to pass.
I guess anyone who's friends with "Scary, The Native American Princess" should not be trusted.
So, we won't be going back to the Great Wolf Lodge anytime soon, although the kids ask just about every day when we'll be returning.
Here's a little video of our escapades.....
