Little Vacation

We just got back from a fun little trip to the new Great Wolf Lodge down in Centralia. It's about 1.5 hours from Seattle and is a giant indoor waterpark. Needless to say, the kids had a blast and it was fun having Grams there, too, to help out. On the first day, before Matt arrived, I ventured into the wave pool with both kids (in life vests) -- as we tackled the waves, Daniel's noggin knocked me in the face resulting in the lovely purple bruise below my eye. The kids really did enjoy the slides, water play, and wave pool throughout. Matt and I rode the Howling Tornado twice -- a great water slide! The place also has a game called MagiQuest where you buy a wand and do quests and adventures throughout the lodge. Daniel and Matt probably hiked about 5 miles through the lodge, up and down stairs, etc. trying to complete all the quests and adventures to make Daniel a Master Magi. He did it - with a bit of help from Daddy with the Dragon Adventure and Bear Adventure.

The house is coming along very quickly -- they expect to have all the framing done by Saturday. The new windows have been installed throughout. It's looking great!

Construction

I've been wanting to post some pictures of the construction on the new house... these are from about a week ago. We're hoping to be in around mid-September... yeah! We had the arborist come in and remove all the overgrown bushes and small trees in the back yard and it looks fabulous now. We are building an area that will be a play area for the kids now and eventually become a hot tub area in the future. I think it's going to be great. I'm really excited about a fenced yard and large, natural area for the kids to play.

It's been a hectic week around here for business, too -- Business is really good but I had to let my assistant go and am trying to handle everything and hire someone new. My mom's coming in, too, and we're taking a little vacation down to the new Great Wolf Lodge which is a giant indoor water park. The kids are going to go nuts! Needless to say, it's a little stressful to plan a vacation (even a short one) with no one managing the business while I'm gone... After that, Matt's parents are coming up and we're taking another short trip to Whidbey Island -- we've never been up there. So it'll be a very busy month...

Kids are great - Daniel is so full of ideas... "Hey mom, I've got an idea... isn't that a great idea?" Kyra is still very, very two -- but she might be growing out of it a little. She has gone on the potty a few times but not often enough to have confidence that I'll be done with diapers anytime in the foreseeable future. Luckily, grandparents are coming so I might at least have fewer diapers in the next few weeks! :)