A friend of mine works at the Great Wolf Lodge in Pocono Mountains, PA. While visiting my mom one year, he was able to get us day passes to use the water park. Spencer wasn’t born yet and we all had a blast! When we realized there was a Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky Ohio, only about an hour away, we knew we had to go!

I wrote to Great Wolf Lodge and told them about our plans to take a family trip there in the up coming weeks. They were very kind enough to offer us a discounted stay!

I have no idea why YouTube uploaded it in such poor quality!

There were many things that I was impressed with during our stay. Within the Lodge there are 2 places to eat. One is the Lumber Jack’s Cook Shanty which is open daily for a family style breakfast. Each morning they had a giant breakfast spread.  Pile your plate with made-to-order omelets and waffles, hash browns, bacon, muffins, cereal, fruit and more. It is Buffet Style! All you can eat! And the prices? You are already thinking over priced and outrageous because it is within the Lodge right?  For myself, my husband and 2 children, breakfast was around $35. I was happy to see this for several reasons. Sure, we could run down the road to some nasty fast food place or we could also leave the property, go to a restaurant and pay the same price PLUS waste time driving, Gas, traffic etc. I was happy to get everything I needed AT the lodge.

The other is The Gitchigoomie Grill. The grill is open for lunch and dinner, and can prepare a meal to satisfy any Northwoods appetite.  Adults feast on appetizers, soups, salads, burgers, steaks, pasta and other specialties from the grill. The only thing that I was a disappointed with on our entire trip was my french fries at the Grill. The meals come with chips but my husband and I wanted french fries. It is $1.50 to substitute and you really don’t get many. At first I thought it might have been isolated to that one meal but we ate several there.

One of the things I swore to the cashier I would mention on my blog was a simple but lifesaving find for me personally. I have naturally curly hair so going to a water park with no hair ties is a real issue for me. In my rush to pack I forgot them! I walked into the gift shop and  asked the cashier what was the tiny chance that they had hair ties? Wouldn’t you know, they HAD THEM! Not even junk ones. A name brand, an 8 pack was only $1.69! This was one of those small details that I was happy someone thought of.

They had a few areas for Toddlers but Spencer wasn’t really interested in much of it. All he wanted to do was keep watching the bucket tip. We were not able to do much as a family because we had to keep switching off with Spencer. My personal opinion would be that this location is more fun with children 5 and over unless you have more than 2 adults or someone to watch a smaller child. We did have a BLAST though!

My Personal Suggestions for the Lodge:

• Towels were scratchy. This included the room towels as well as the park towels.
• No place to hang swimsuits to dry in the rooms. Clips in the shower perhaps?
• Switch to turn balcony lights off. We didn’t sit out because it attracted the bugs.

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Check out current Great Wolf Lodge Deals through November 2010!

I was out with 20 friends last night at a place called Howl at The Moon. It is a Piano Bar with 3 fantastic players that take your requests all night long. I am normally not a fan of music when it is not sung by the original artist. These guys were amazing! It is definitely adult entertainment though. Now granted it IS a bar but they use some very colorful language in some of THEIR songs. It has been awhile since I had so much fun. It definitely showed me that there is more to life than I have been letting myself enjoy. I had one drink the entire night and had a blast. I personally don’t believe I need to kill my liver to have a good time. Because I don’t drink anyway and my Jeep holds 7, I stood up to be the designated driver for my friends. There were a few others not drinking so I wasn’t the only one. Because I was the DD there was no charge for my non-alcoholic beverages. I was happy to hear that because at $2 each (I believe) I would have not bought much.

The rate normally to get in is $5 I believe. Because we were on a VIP list we didn’t have to pay. It would have been well worth the $5 though.

The only downfall is they do not serve food in the bar. They have an outside restaurant that will deliver to you. They are located across the street. It took a good 45 mins to get our food. We tried to call them for a good 30 minutes. When the guy arrived to bring someone elses food, he was very sweet about taking my order back with him.

My phone died early so until I get home I can’t post to many pics but I will add more later. All in all a great place to check out if you are visiting Cleveland!

Check out the Top Kids & Family Rentals for (6.21-6.27). Lots of great movies including Alice in Wonderland, Tooth Fairy, The Spy Next Door, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and more!

I have 10 free codes to giveaway. 5 winners will each receive 2 codes for 2 free movie rentals!

ENTER: Just tell me your all time favorite movie and your favorite scene from that movie! Yep, that’s it!
EXTRA: Follow @RedBox on twitter

“Toy Story 3″ welcomes Woody, Buzz and the whole gang back to the big screen as Andy prepares to depart for college and his loyal toys find themselves in? daycare! These untamed tots with their sticky little fingers do not play nice, so it’s all for one and one for all as plans for the great escape get underway. A few new faces-some plastic, some plush-join the adventure, including iconic swinging bachelor and Barbie’s counterpart Ken, a thespian hedgehog named Mr. Pricklepants and a pink, strawberry-scented teddy bear called Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear.

• Tom Hanks
• Tim Allen
• Joan Cusack
• Don Rickles
• Wallace Shawn
• John Ratzenberger
• Estelle Harris
• Blake Clark
• John Morris
• Laurie Metcalf

2010 Summer MovieCamp®

Looking for a cool getaway for gobs of kids this summer? Bring them to AMC Summer MovieCamp and enjoy the magic of movies! Summer MovieCamp will be offered at 10 a.m. each Tuesday morning this summer at participating theatres, from June 15 through August 10.  At only $1 admission, it’s an affordable option for summer fun for families and groups. All admission and concession proceeds will benefit two AMC charities, Variety – The Children’s Charity and the Will Rogers Institute.

No outside food will be allowed during Summer MovieCamp but you can take advantage of our KidsPack™ concession combos for $4 – more than 30% off the regular price.*

Advance tickets will be on sale starting June 8 at 214 participating AMC theatre locations and online. Doors will open at 9:30 a.m. and shows will begin at 10 a.m. local time nationwide. See a list of participating theatres or search by zip code to get tickets. Tickets for each week will be on sale approximately one week prior to the scheduled show date.

June 15 Shrek The Third (PG)	June 22 Imagine That (PG)	June 29 Monsters vs. Aliens (PG)
July 6 Madagascar (PG)	July 13 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (PG)	July 20 Hotel for Dogs (PG)
July 27 Kung Fu Panda (PG)	August 3 The Spiderwick Chronicles (PG)	August 10 Surprise Mystery Title

Steve Spangler is a teacher, science toy designer, speaker, author and an Emmy award-winning television personality. Spangler is probably best known for his Mentos and Diet Coke geyser experiment that went viral in 2005 and prompted more than 1,000 related YouTube videos. Spangler is the founder of SteveSpanglerScience.com, a Denver-based company specializing in the creation of science toys, classroom science demonstrations, teacher resources and home for Spangler’s popular science experiment archive and video collection. Spangler is a frequent guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show where he takes classroom science experiments to the extreme. Check out his pool filled with 2,500 boxes of cornstarch!

Fun Fly Stick – Static Generator

The Fun Fly Stick is an ingenious battery operated static electricity generator that allows you to float tinsel shapes on a cloud of electrons. Press the button on the Fun Fly Stick for a few seconds to generate a static charge. Drop the tinsel shape onto the stick to quickly transfer the negative charge to the tinsel. Since like charges repel each other, the negatively charged tinsel shape floats above the negatively charged stick. The learning curve is about two minutes and you’re ready to amaze everyone with the Fun Fly Stick. Recommended for children ages 5 and up. This was one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Since the boys are only 3 and 8, they were TOTALLY amazed at the fact that could “make something fly like Harry Potter”

Mentos Geyser Tube

The Geyser Tube™ is a loading tube for the now famous Diet Coke geyser powered by MENTOS®. If you’ve ever tried doing the experiment, you know how difficult it can be to drop the MENTOS® into the bottle before the reaction takes off… and you’re soaking wet. The Geyser Tube will give you a perfect launch every time with time to stand back. You want to talk about 2 boys laughing so hard they almost throw up? I don’t know why they found it so but they were in tears laughing. Royal had seen this many times on the myth show we watch but he was still “OH MY GOD MOM LOOK!” when it shot up. I will admit that is is much cooler to see it in front of you than on TV!

In our house, everyone is a fan of SpongeBob. I didn’t know the show even existed until about 2004 but it first came to TV in May of 1999. My mom started buying the Season Sets for us years ago and i am happy to see the new one release! The only thing I really hate is that this is only half the season. Just another way to get us to spend more money Here are the episodes that are included on this DVD. Great addition to the SpongeBob collection!

Disc One
1. House Fancy/Krabby Road
2. Penny Folish/Nautical Novice
3. Spongicus/Suction Cup Symphony
4. Not Normal/Gone
5. The Splinter/Slide Whistle Stooges
6. A Life in a Day/Sun Bleached

Disc Two
7. Giant Squidward/No Nose Knows
8. The Patty Caper/Plankton’s Regular
9. Boating Buddies/The Krabby Kronicle
10. The Slumber Party/Grooming Gary
11. SpongeBob vs. The Big One (guest starring Johnny Depp as Jack Kahuna Laguna!)
12. Porous Pockets/Choir Boys

Special Features
- The SpongeBob History Song
- Ballons (bonus short)
- Juiceman (bonus short)
- The Outfit (bonus short)
- Traffic (bonus short)