Midwinter getaway

We went on a little midwinter getaway this past weekend, to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls. We had been there once before, so we knew what to expect this time around. We were not disappointed. Past the reservations he had on our first trip, Liam went on anything and everything he was old enough (tall enough) for. The Wooly Mammoth wound up being his favourite - go figure.Unfortunately, Mallory was ready to step right up and take his place. She refused to do pretty much everything. Even the tiny little water slides in Chipmunk Cove - she flat out refused, even after I tried bribing her ("Just go down the slide one time and Mommy will catch you and then take you back to our room for a treat!") Honestly, you cannot get her off the slides at the playground and these ones are no taller. If only she'd gone down once, I'm sure she would have loved it and spent the rest of the weekend doing it again and again.No matter. The tiny boxes of sugar-laden cereal that we brought along for breakfast in our hotel room were all she needed to have a good time. And thankfully, there were no requests for more Froot Loops at the grocery store last night. Those are for vacations only!!Right before our trip, Chad celebrated his 10th anniversary with the company and his selection from the anniversary gift catalogue was a point and shoot camera. Because, you know, we don't have enough pictures in this family. I have to admit that it is pretty cool - much less to lug around than my monster, and I wasn't fazed in the least to bring it into the steamy water park. It also does video (as I think most cameras do these days) so we got some cute clips to boot.

I messed up roughly half of the pictures from the weekend by attempting to override the auto controls and shoot some frames manually. They all suck. Lesson learned.We went down to the lobby for story time each night. Can you make out Mallory in this picture? She was freaked out by the animatronic animals, and wanted to hear the stories, but refused to face the front of the room where she could see them. Only Mallory.We had to pass this cafe on each trip to and from our hotel room. We did eventually cave and let the kids each pick out one thing from it. And I might have had one myself, too. Hey... we were on vacation.

After the weekend at the water park, we packed up, Liam shed a few tears because he was sad to leave, and we took the kids on the compulsory trip to see Niagara Falls before heading home. You can see the river (or the river gorge, anyway), from inside the water park, they are that close. It was a little less misty than last time, but not by much. The trees in the area were all beautifully covered with ice from the constant spray. On the plus side, the Niagara parks commission has constructed a new (well, new to us since our trip 2 years ago) visitor's centre including a walkway across the River Road that makes it a lot easier to get around on foot. On the minus side, we spent $9 on parking for a 5 minute view of the falls. I can only imagine what their summer rates are.