Great Wolf Lodge

On Thursday we went to The Great Wolf Lodge in Concord to celebrate Sam's birthday. Since the boys were out of school on Thursday and Friday I thought it would be less crowded to go during the week than on a weekend. I apparently didn't consider that there were 130,000 other kids out during these same two days, because it was still pretty crowded. These days, though, with homeschooling and year round schools, you never can tell what your gonna get. Judging by the parking lot it could have been a lot worse. The waterpark is for resort guests only, so you have to stay to play. I'm not really fond of staying in hotels, and staying in one 30 minutes from home seemed weird, but the boys find it fun. I would have been fine with going home to spend the night and going back the next day, but whatever. The lodge was really cool, and we had a great time. I did, however, have one issue with the "theme" rooms. When I booked the room I found out that if you put the word "SCOUT" (Sam is a Boy Scout and I had never heard this, but I found the coupon code online) in the promo box you got a standard room at a rate of $159. This was $60 off of the online rate, and this is what I booked. The scout rate only applied to the standard rooms, not the theme suites. Now the theme suites are pretty cool if you are a kid, they have kid sections within the room that are set up like log cabins or tents, with bunk beds and their own tv and video games. It would have cost way over $100 more for the theme room. I figure what the kids don't know won't hurt them, and it was only one night, they need to be in the water park, I'm cheap, and so on and so on. Anyway, so we are walking to our standard room (which by the way was pretty nice, it had 2 queens and a separate sitting area, a mini fridge and a microwave), and all of the doors are signed with "KIDS CAMP" "WOLF DEN" "KIDS CABIN" as to what type of room you have. Now, they are still cleaning rooms, since we got there early, and the doors are open and my boys can see into the rooms with the tents and log cabins and are getting excited. We get to our room and there is no sign, just room #2019. I tried to say that we got a Scout room, we're scouts, we don't need fancy cabins, they were like WHATEVER. The lodge might as well put a sign on the standard rooms that says "Mothers who don't love their children enough to pay for a good room." But they were fine with what we had. See, if you don't overindulge your children, they learn to appreciate whatever they get. I didn't even have to say "Not all kids get to go to the Great Wolf Lodge" which I was fully prepared to do. The water park was awesome and they had a great time. Sam is more into extreme rides that are super high and fast, which these weren't, but even he thought it was great. I don't think he will want to go much past the age of 12 or so, but it sufficed for 10. They had a special Halloween event in the evening that Ryan and I went to. Sam wasn't willing to give up waterpark time. You got to wear your costume and Ryan is dressing as Paul Stanly from KISS, but we forgot his wig, which meant the world was coming to an end for Ryan. Somehow I got to take the blame for this, as usual. But I spiked his hair and he just went as a generic 80's rockstar, which seemed to placate him, until someone asked him if he was John Travolta in Grease. He doesn't even know who that is, but he still got pissed. But all in all, a good time was had by everyone, and I think we will start a new family tradition and go at least once a year.

We Got Boo'd

Last night we got Boo'd. If your not familiar, this is a neighborhood thing where you get a pack of Halloween goodies left at your doorstep with a Boo poem and a picture of a ghost. The poem instructs you too make two goody packs of your own, copy the poem and ghost, and go Boo two additional neighbors. Then you stick the ghost in you window so that everyone knows who has already been Boo'd. Now, we are not entirely positive who Boo'd us, but we can only think of one person whose treat bag would have no chocolate, but consist of pretzels and a FIBER ONE bar. A fiber bar!!! We chuckled all night at that. Thanks DM, it had to be you!

October Updates

So pretty much nothing blogworthy has been happening around here lately, but I couldn't close out October without another post. So here is how we've been Livin' Lockwood for the past few weeks.

SAM - Fourth grade is going to be the death of both Sam and I. I have already done
4th grade, and I am not enjoying going through it again. This year Sam was moved up into what his school calls the "Enrichment Program." It is a slightly modified version of a "gifted" program, since I don't think any of these kids is actually certified as gifted. Anyway, I really thought that this would be great for Sam, but now...not so much. Math is great, science is fine, but writing...OY VAY! You would think this child has never put pencil to paper, and I mean this literally, as in he cannot hold a pencil correctly and form letters. Apparently he has spent the greater part of his school years thus far doing worksheets, because I have never noticed this like I have this year. It goes far beyond handwriting, though, throw in sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. I have also come to realize that if Sam has no interest in a subject than he just really doesn't give a damn about paying attention and learning anything about said subject. Sam is working on these issues and I am working on not concluding each homework session by screaming at him. I have not had my finest mommy moments in the past few weeks, but don't call Nanny911on me yet.

Sam finished up his Fall basketball league and it went really well. There were some great ball players on this league and I think that it really helped him to be a better player himself. He has a couple of weeks off before his winter league starts.

The boys have off of school tomorrow and Friday, so we are going to the Great Wolf Lodge for Sam's birthday. He turns 10 on Nov. 5th, and this is one of those indoor water park resorts. And we know he loves his water parks! I will post more about it when we get back.

RYAN - Ryan has finally finished up his first season of baseball, which he loved. It was so awesome to see how he kept improving and how his love for the game grew. He is still struggling a little in school, but he has a fantastic teacher who is working with him on different learning methods. We are in the beginning stages of having him monitored/tested for dyslexia or some other form of a learning disability. Don't know much about that yet, but I am glad that he finally has a teacher that wants to take more of a proactive approach to his difficulties.

Tonight Ryan has gone with my Dad to watch his beloved Yankees in the first game of the World Series. They are going to the place that my Dad sees Ric Flair most weeks, so Ryan is also in "stalker" mode. He has gone with his camera, a WWE newspaper article he would like to discuss, and his Ric Flair action figure. Hopefully RF is there or he will be really disappointed.

SCOTT AND I - Business has really started to pick up for us. This is the busiest we have been in awhile. We have projects booked out to the end of the year, so YAY US! Now, getting people to actually pay their bill is another issue altogether. I am getting to be quite the expert at filing small claims lawsuits. I have filed lawsuits in every county within 100 miles of Charlotte. This was all new to me, despite Scott's belief that because I worked as a paralegal for 10 years I should know how to do everything that might happen in a courthouse. I did real estate and estate planning. If you need a mortgage closed or a will, I'm your girl, but not so much on suing people. But I'm a pro now. NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T PAY YOUR BILLS - Don't put all of your information on Facebook. I have tracked down more deadbeats using Facebook, so at the very least make your profile private. Dummies.

We've got our water park and Halloween coming up, so hopefully I'll be posting more regularly. See ya then!