For our Christmas present this year, GiGi and PaPa gave us a weekend at the Great Wolf Lodge. This hotel is more than just a place to stay. It's an event, and people come from all over the region to stay here and participate in the many activities there are to do here. To call this place just a hotel would be like calling bacon just a piece of meat or a Porsche just transportation. The GWL, as we will call it, has everything from a water park to an arcade to a fantasy game that requires magic wands.

We arrived on Friday night and ate dinner in the hotel, then hit the water park for awhile before we had to head to bed. The next day we did every single activity the GWL had to offer. We swam until our fingers wrinkled up. We played video games until we were out of credits. We walked around every (freaking) level of the hotel ... all 8 of them ... completing different quests with our magic wands until I was ready to "accidentally" drop them down the Secret Staircase.

Seriously, this was a great get-away for us during a very busy time in the semester. Gina and I both had been going 100 mph since August, and this was a nice break from the intensity. Of course, that intensity was waiting for us when we got back home, but it felt good to ignore it for a few days. You can see some pictures below of our fun times, and there are even more in our November 2013 photo album. We are so thankful GiGi and PaPa thought of this idea, and we can't think of a better Christmas present for our family.