Howling

We limped in from the "retreat" Sunday afternoon. I have mixed feelings on its success. For every good thing there was something bad, and all together it was pretty exhausting and not very relaxing.
Great Wolf Lodge was like nothing I have ever seen before. Think hotel/water park/adventure land. The hotel was its own experience, with anamotronic animals and people in the lobby, snow falling from the ceiling and a complete role-playing medieval mystery game throughout the hotel. And then you get to the awesome water park which is four stories tall and inside the hotel, so weather is rendered irrelevant. There are restaurants, gift shops and even a spa right there inside the hotel. It was pretty neat, and free, thanks to the Army.
Checking in was chaos and we were tired and hurting. We dropped Marci and the boys off at their room first. As I had seen on the web site, the boys had a special "room" with bunk beds and its own TV made to look like a cave den or something. Really cute, and separates the kids from the parents a little so hopefully some sleeping will take place. Unfortunately we weren't on the same floor, so Sam and I went up one more flight to our room....and it was a totally ordinary hotel room. No special cave den for Sam. Just two queen sized beds. Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice or wonder why he didn't get the special room like Bryce. I chose not to complain to our hosts about it, but you have to wonder why they weren't equal.
Since our time at the lodge was limited, we through the kids in their suits and headed to the pool. They played in this great little area for smaller kids and there was barely anyone there because it was dinner time. We let them play for an hour, ate dinner at 8 and the kids were in bed by 9.
We were up at 7 the next morning, cramming breakfast in with a free voucher. They have a main dining area that is buffet for three meals a day. The food was decent, good if its free but apparently its expensive and it's not worth paying that much for. Thanks to the Army all our meals that day were covered if we ate there. Then we took the kids to the "daycare". Yikes. It was just a conference room with a few toys thrown in it. Thankfully there were nice people trying to make it work for our kids. At first they put babies to five in the same room, and it didn't look good. Later they moved 3 and up to their own room.
The conference started around 9 a.m. and a well-known and popular ACS speaker was there to present the main body of the lecture. Unfortunately, I don't like her. She keeps it interesting by throwing the book out and telling funny stories. You walk away having learned nothing. Meanwhile, we learn they are going to cut the lecture drastically and the itinerary they gave us was definitely "tentative." They said they would get us out by noon instead of 4 p.m. Then they hit us with the bad news. The reason is because our unit, who was tacked on to another unit's retreat, doesn't have the same child care. The other unit was getting childcare from 9 a.m. until 10 pm that night! We were getting three hours. HUGE disappointment. I'm surprised we didn't attack. So, at noon Marci and I went to get the kids, eat lunch, and head back to the room. So much for shopping or hitting the big slides without the kids. Or even just catching up on 8 months of lost sleep.
We hung out, napped, and I got to read my book for an hour or so, which sadly was one of the highlights of the whole trip, even as Sam threw a colossal temper tantrum the whole hotel could hear. Gotta love vacations.
We hit the park again that evening. Definitely more crowded, but this time we let the kids hit the wave pool and found out they could go on some bigger slides, so I went down with them. I had flashbacks to breaking my nose on a water slide, and after two I was done. But the kids went again and again and had a blast. They were so worn out. We got them back for baths and pj's, then to story time where Rowdy the Reindeer made an appearance and snow fell from the sky. Then dinner and hanging out in Marci's room so the boys could play in the cave den. We were up until 10 or more! It was crazy. =)
The next morning we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get out of the rooms, to breakfast and the rest of the event by 9. The second part taught by our temporary chaplain was better. It was interesting to listen to these Army wives deal with our unique and also not unique issues. At one point that weekend a father walked in with a baby strapped to his chest. We all noticed at the same time and involuntary "awwwws" came from every woman in the room and it took the man a full second to realize we were reacting to him and his face went beet red. And men wonder what makes a woman tick...=) It was a room full of women who hadn't seen their baby daddies in months!
The chaplain from our unit let us know that the water park had been paid for by our commander. We would have had to pay for it ourselves. But I have to wonder, why did they choose the water park over the childcare? I'm honestly not sure which I would have preferred. I was expecting childcare, I was also expecting to have to pay for access to the water park. Hmmm...
The itinerary and the hotel disagreed on when lunch was served, so even though it would have been free, we had to get home, so we left without it. Three and a half hours later and kids screaming, we made it home. Phew. I'm so exhausted today. It really wasn't much of a "retreat" unless you count the fact that I was able to get out of my head and the daily drudgery of 8 months of a deployment for 48 hours. I did love having my friend Marci there and Bryce and Sam entertained each other so well. Now if we could have gotten Gavin to be less grumpy....one-year-olds. Sheesh! =)