Something Fun

Today's prompt is "something fun", a very appropriate prompt since today is Natalie's birthday. She was the one who was the most excited about this trip, because she would have her birthday during this trip.

We started the day with a buffet breakfast before 9am at The Loose Moose Cottage, one of the restaurants here. Everyone was there except Anthony, who was still asleep.

Next I took Eric to the tail end of the Clock Tower Show, where animatronic forest animals come to life around the "Great Clock Tower" in the lobby area. That activity continued into the "Wolf Walk" where a guide walked us around the lobby to show us other animatronic animals located around the lobby area. These activities were geared toward kids Eric's age. He lost interest before the end so we got ready to go to the outdoor water park.

He enjoyed just walking and splashing around the outdoor pool. His favorite part was an intermittent waterfall around a big tower with a howling wolf figure at the top. Every time he heard the wolf howling, he would run towards the tower in time for the waterfall to come down on top of him. He was pretty tired after all of that, but later in the afternoon, we did convince him to go to the indoor water park to go on the lazy river and a couple of slides. As you can see from this picture, he was exhausted.

Meanwhile, the girls had already started their quests where they had left off yesterday. They tried to start at around 7:30ish, but the sensors were not active until 9am. They did go to the indoor water park for a bit, but then got back to their quests. Eventually they got to the end of all of their quests. The last task was that they had to kill the red dragon. Natalie apparently went first and killed the dragon with Aly and Emily's help, but Aly and Emily both "died" during their turns. The girls took this very seriously and thought Natalie didn't try as hard as she could have and later when Patrick saw Natalie, she was in tears. All seemed to be well later when they all tried again together, but again, they didn't succeed. They even had Anthony watch (they think of him as the expert) and he will get up early tomorrow (at 9am) so he can help them in this final task.

In this picture Natalie has a button on her shirt that says "Master Magi", which she received for completing her tasks. She posed like this on purpose, with her wand poised to strike above her head. I took a few pictures, some with the big camera and some with my iPhone, so I could post here tonight on the blog. I told her she looked intimidating, and she broke out into laughter, so she had to stop and compose herself so she could look intimidating again.

This evening, we had P.F. Chang's takeout for dinner. The resort gave us free kids' meal coupons and the girls all got excited when they heard us say "P.F. Chang's". Natalie opened her presents after dinner and then we got Dreyer's ice cream from downstairs for dessert. After that, I took Eric to see the whole Clock Tower Show followed by the first part of Story Time. He must have been tired, because he lost interest in that too and wanted to go to the room.

The big boys went to the indoor and outdoor water park. They all went to the arcade where the girls' favorite thing was to get tickets so they could get prizes. They each ended up with a monkey stuffed toy and Alex gave Natalie his tickets so she could get a Ninja with a red headband (stuffed toy). The big boys again spent a lot of time in the "gr8 space" area playing Xbox.

We check out tomorrow. You can bet that the kids will try to do as much as they can before we head home. I guess that means that they're all having fun.