Hoesing Christmas Vacation

After my father passed my mom thought it would be a good idea for us all to take a vacation together.  It has been a long time since we have taken any sort of family vacation anywhere- even when Brian and I were in high school we would never go on the "family" vacation because we thought it was lame.  After that it was just too hard to go anywhere as my father's illness progressed and our lives got busier so we just never took any sort of vacation together.  After some discussing of everyone's insane schedule we decided something close over Christmas Break would work best.  Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City ended up being a great choice.
We picked up my mom in Grand Island on Tuesday morning and headed out.  We stopped in Lincoln to eat lunch at Runza- which was a nightmare.  It took us an hour to eat lunch because they were so slow.  Thatcher got his usual corndogs- that kid could live off corndogs and donuts for the rest of his life- and Mike apparently shared those corndogs with him.  I am glad that I stuck to my salad!  After we got on I-29 Thatcher let his gallon of chocolate milk and lunch of corndogs fly!  I have never seen that much puke come out of such a small kid!  We pulled over in Hamburg Iowa and spent almost an hour cleaning out his seat and Thatcher.  It was a pleasant start to our trip.  After we got back on the road we did make it to Kansas City event free. 
The Lodge is massive and just a gigantic hotel with kids of every age running around everywhere!  Mike ended up getting sick later that night and did not go eat authentic Kansas City BBQ with us.  The Lodge has story time down in the lobby every night so that was all we really did that day.  They have a clock with animal characters that move and sing, and have snow falling out of the sky, Violet a wolf that lives in the Lodge also comes out and visits the kids.  The still had their Christmas stuff out which was nice because I thought they would have had it all down by the time we got there.

Wednesday we spent the day in the "big pool" as Thatcher calls it.  They have stuff for all ages, a kiddie pool with slides, a gigantic water fort, a lazy river, and slides for adults and older kids.  The slides were awesome!  I got my workout going up and down those stairs- which is a good thing because the gym there was not good.  Thatcher pretty much stuck to the kiddie pool and the fort.  I tried to get him to go in the lazy river or the bigger pool and he was just not having it.  We did get him to go down the slide if you threw him down it.  Wednesday we hit the outlet mall, which is gigantic, and there were some great after Christmas deals.  Later that night we went to a restaurant called T-Rex which has all these mechanical dinosaurs everywhere.  Thatcher was scared of the T-Rex and wanted nothing to do with it.  Although if you ask him now where he wants to eat he says T-Rex.

Thursday was much of the same; pool and shopping.  We went over to the Cabela's that was within walking distance of our hotel.  It is probably the biggest Cabela's I have ever seen.  They had mulitple displays with deers, bears, elephants, crocodiles, fish in a river, and a aquarium.  Thatcher had been over there the day before with Mike and wanted a stick horse; which Mike told him no.  He asked for that same stick horse from me and I also told him no.  Thatcher did not give up though- ask Grandma and you shall receive :)  Thatcher does love that stick horse; although he uses it sometimes as a weapon and not a horse. 
By Friday, we were all tired and ready to head home.  It was a fun trip and the kids had so much fun.  Thatcher only made one potty stop on the way back from Kansas City so our trip home was much better than our trip out there.   That kid is a champ when it comes to car rides.  He was very well behaved pretty much the entire trip, which makes me feel better about taking him to Canada this summer.  We were all so tired that Thatcher and I slept until 8:30 Saturday morning!

There is already some talk of going somewhere else next year.  We will see if this becomes a regular thing for the Hoesings.  It was a great trip and a great way to spend out Christmas Break.