Natalie Turns 4 & Great Wolf Lodge

In all the chaos of Christmas and our travels, we celebrated a birthday (two actually).  That's right...Natalie turned 4!  I can hardly believe it.  Our ditching birthday parties in exchange for a birthday outing experiment continued with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  Since we were in Wisconsin, we headed to The Dells for a night, and enjoyed a day at the water park while outside I think the high may have reached double digits.

birthday girl

Jack & Ben

We were joined by Nana & Papa and Mimi and Pa, who also brought Jack with them all the way from Indiana!

the boys decided to show off their muscles before heading to the pool

Natalie and I enjoyed a birthday pedicure...birthday girls only.

Scoops spa

(Ice cream themed spa, princess crowns, and a free scoop while your polish dries is all ok by me!)

waiting for pizza & cake

the original plan was for dinner out, but 3 tired toddlers called for a change of plans.

Instead we ordered pizza in and partied in our PJs in our hotel room.

Natalie requested this cake months ago.  Fitting for our little lady, don't you think?

wolf den!

our room had bunk beds in a separate kids' area.  Slam dunk success.

posing in front of the water park before Jack headed back home,

and Nat & Ben back to the water park for another day of playing.

one of the kids' areas 

Nat was a water-sliding pro

Ben got a little overwhelmed, I think mostly by how loud it was inside.

but look how handsome he is!

Natalie must have done the lily pads behind her 20 times.  She shamed some of the older kids who gave it a try!

We had so much fun, and easily could have occupied ourselves with another night there.  Overall, I will say that abandoning birthday parties has been a success and something that I look to continue.  It gave us the opportunity to have two big outings that we might normally have not done otherwise, plus we had some great family time.