A family vacation...

Last week we took a family vacation to Cincinnati to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge.

We had a great time, once Brandon and I adjusted our expectations.

As parents, we have learned it is very important to have the proper expectations for any thing you attempt to do with your kids, from eating out to potty training. For example, do we expect a 1 and 2 year old to sit quietly through a two hour meal at a fancy restaurant? Of course not. Most of the time, our kids exceed our expectations and walk away feeling proud and successful.

We started out with ridiculous expectations for our vacation. These included a peaceful and educational trip to the aquarium, both kids to nap and sleep as normal in a strange hotel room with their sibling screaming a few feet from them, etc... The first day was a bomb, due to these silly expectations.

First lesson learned: aquariums do not equal fun to toddlers.
Sawyer likes fish. He thinks they are cool. It was kind of cool to see a really big fish and a small fish, etc... But he is two and he was not interested in a slow paced cruise the the aquarium to observe thousands of different fish in hundreds of different tanks, while mama and dada stopped to tell him about the types and differences of these fish. Eden was equally uninterested in riding quietly in her stroller to absorb these same experiences. When reflecting on it, I realize that Brandon and I were being ridiculous. But at the time we were frustrated and confused and annoyed and yelling.

Second lesson learned: sleep arrangements must be changed when sleeping a hotel room.
At home, we do our routine of stories, etc... then lay the kids in their beds and leave the room. They may fuss for seconds and then they sleep. We expected to do the same thing, we were all just going to be in one room while we did this... Ha! We arrived at the hotel with a grumpy Eden who had skipped morning nap so we could take her to the boring aquarium and Sawyer who was also past his nap. Then we attempted to put them to sleep. For about an hour there was screaming and crying and tantrums as we tried to force them and even discipline them in to napping. "Why wouldn't they sleep," we asked ourselves. Well it could have been that they were overtired, confused and scared about being in a strange place where their sibling was also screaming their head off a few feet away!

After much struggle, I learned a hard lesson that day that left me with plenty of mommy guilt. In this situation, where they were scared and confused, my children needed to be loved, not forced into sleeping. I laid down with my little man and held him while he went quickly and quietly to sleep, while Brandon, got to rock sweet Eden to sleep.

The rest did us all some good and we were able to finish the rest of our vacation with more reasonable expectations and had a great time.

My babies love the water, so the majority of our time was spent enjoying the water park. This place is amazing and includes 10+ slides, most of which they let Sawyer ride with one of us, a baby splash pool with slides, a wave pool, a lazy river, and pools both indoors and out. The favorite for both kids was the massive "fort" in the middle where water shoots in all directions. Both are also fearless in the water, which is great and terrifying. Even little Eden was jumping in from the side of the pool in to Brandon's arms. And Sawyer was perfecting his doggy paddling. Little swimmers like their daddy.

We also enjoyed a trip to King's Island, where we spend all our time in the kids' area. Preggos can't ride roller coasters and Brandon didn't want to ride alone. Sawyer, however, will ride anything! He pointed to the big coasters and said. "ride that!" Eden got to ride some things with us and she was all smiles. Sawyer and Brandon stayed while Eden and I took afternoon naps at the hotel.

Here are some photos from the trip:

Movie time on Daddy's laptop

King's Island

Loving this ride at King's Island

Eden got to ride a few rides

He loved the car rides the most

My water babies

Eden loved the spouts

Sawyer's favorite of the small slides

One of Sawyer's favorite things was the "story time" they had in the lobby each night. The characters would come to life and sign and tell a story. He was mesmerized. We got him to leave the pool each night by telling him we had to go get ready for story time.