Foto Phriday - 9/7/12

This is my eighty-first Foto Phriday post. The pictures today are from a wedding, of Coral, and from Great Wolf Lodge. Full set with all 72 photos can be viewed here.

We attended Ricky and Amanda's wedding two Sundays ago in Lacey, WA. They got married in a quaint little spot called the Jacob Smith House. Don't ask me who Jacob Smith was because I can't find any information on him. I don't think it's the same Jacob Smith who was an American general.

It was an outdoor wedding and the weather was pretty good. It was actually slightly humid, but overall, pretty comfortable.

Since most of our common friends have kids, Julie had a lot of fun playing on the property. Here she is running down a hill with James.

Mark and Megan's youngest, Cora, gave me some trouble whenever I wanted to take a picture of her. Got more than one good one though.

James tumbling down the hill.

And there's Ricky walking down the aisle.

Here's Jason, one of Ricky's groomsmen walking down with a bridesmaid.

Here's an old friend, Jaaron, walking down the aisle. Haven't seen him in years since he lives down in Portland with his family. It was good to catch up with him.

And here comes the bride! Amanda looked very nice.

During the ceremony.

The reception was held immediately afterward inside the Jacob Smith House. There was good barbeque food and cinnamon rolls and lots of beer.

Julie and Cora playing.

Coral was a very well-behaved baby during the whole wedding. Little cuddle bug!

Speaking of Coral, she is still just getting cuter and cuter. She's laughing a little more, but still not at that giggling phase that I'm so very much looking forward to. Julie also makes her very happy.

Great Wolf Lodge is a place that we've been wanting to go to for years now. When Juliana was younger, it didn't make much sense to spend the moola to visit there because she wouldn't really appreciate. Well, with being older now and preschool coming up, we decided to finally take a trip there on a less crowded weekday.

I would like to write a full review of our Great Wolf experience later, but for now, I'll just tell you that we had an absolute blast! It's definitely an awesome place that we will be visiting again.

If you are unfamiliar with Great Wolf Lodge, it's a chain of family hotels with giant indoor waterparks. In order to play at the waterpark, you must be a guest there. There are no day trips allowed.

There are 11 Great Wolf resorts in the country with three more on the way. The one we have in Washington state is located in the small town of Grand Mound and it was opened in 2008. It's about an hour and a half south of Seattle and 20 minutes south of Olympia. I'm guessing it's cheaper to build out there, as well as it's halfway between Portland and Seattle, so you can hit both markets.

What makes Great Wolf so awesome is that it's super kid-friendly. Think Disneyland customer service, but in an indoor waterpark. However, that doesn't mean that older kids and adults won't have fun. The red and yellow slide on the right there was for 48" and taller only and boy is it a blast! It has this huge drop in it that leads to a giant cone that was simply incredible. I must have gone on it over a dozen times. This HD YouTube video gives you the best idea of what the ride is like, but it still can't do that drop justice. It's pretty freaky every time.

I don't think I would enjoy this place on the weekend. I've heard that it's very busy with lines going all the way down the stairs. We aimed to go on a weekday and it was awesome. Enough people there to make you not feel lonely, but no lines for anything at all.

Another cool feature is the giant bucket that dumps 1,000 gallons of water every 2.5 minutes or so. You can hear it from all over the park. It's pretty intense to stand under. Overall, a very enjoyable mini-vacation. By the way, all of the Great Wolf pictures were taken with my LX3 because I dared not to take my $2,000 5D anywhere near the water.


Here is a video I put together from our time at Great Wolf. Gives you a pretty good idea of what the waterpark looks like. To see more pictures from Great Wolf Lodge and Ricky and Amanda's wedding, view the full set.