Moving in to Great Wolf Lodge

**This post and a few others to follow are a little late in getting published.  I started them in the hotel but couldn't get pictures uploaded so I wrote the text while we there but gave up on publishing them until we were settled back in at the house.**

We are now out of our house and we have moved into a hotel so that our downstairs floor can be repaired from the flood damage.  The contractor has given us an estimate of 10 days to do the work but it could end up being longer. 

Fortunately, Stuart has spent a lot of time talking with our insurance company and with the manager at Great Wolf Lodge to try to work out a way for us to stay at a place that would be fun for the kids so they don't go stir crazy being cooped up in a little hotel room for 10 days.  With all of the repairs that are needed and the insurance deductible looming over us, we really don't want to have to come out of pocket for the hotel stay.  Thanks to a great deal that Great Wolf Lodge offers to families that homeschool and the generosity of the management at the resort, we will now call Great Wolf our home for the next 10 or more days, at no cost to us!

From the parking lot you can begin to see the awesomeness of this hotel.  Those are water slide tubes and a giant water slide funnel.  There is just so much fun inside that it couldn't be contained within the walls!

Water Slides at Great Wolf Lodge

The kids couldn't wait to get inside.  Of course, the sound of howling wolves greeting us as we approached the door was just the perfect touch.

Front Door at Great Wolf Lodge

Here's the view from our room for the next week and a half.


This is such a major event for our family but we are holding to our faith that all will work out well in the end. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28.  I have packed up all of the kids school books and supplies so we will try to continue to work on their homeschool studies here. But we will also make sure that they have lots of time to blow off steam with all of the fun activities there are to do here.  I want them to feel like this is a fun staycation and not feel the stress that Stuart and I may feel as we deal with the issues around the house repairs.

Of course the kids are saying their own special prayers thanking God for helping Daddy to let us stay here for the the next 10 days!
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Elements of True Character


We try to work every day on helping our children develop true character.  We want to start this now while they are young so that as adults they will make a difference in the world around them as community leaders, free-thinkers, seekers of knowledge and truth, and of course, loving and compassionate Christians.

 I ran across this quote today and it is exactly what I pray we are teaching in our daily homeschool studies.  Math, reading, science, and more are taught, but above all I hope that my children are learning about the elements of true character.
“Character is the aim of true education; and science, history and literature are but means used to accomplish this desired end. Character is not the result of chance, but of continuous right thinking and right acting. True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also, honest men, with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love. It seeks to make men and women who prize truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control as the choicest acquisitions of a successful life. It is regrettable that modern education so little emphasizes these fundamental elements of true character.”
– David O. McKay
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Packing Out

It has been a challenging few weeks as we have been working on the long process of getting our house back to normal after The Great Flood of 2014. we dealt with giant drying machines, digging our stuff we need on a daily basis from piles created in a mad dash to save them from water damage, finding a general contractor for repairs, and then the regular craziness of our lives on top of all of that.

Lately my anthem I sing to myself throughout the day is Hillsong's new song called Oceans.  I think the name is quite fitting considering how water has had such an impact on our lives lately.  Here's a video of the song I found on YouTube:


Today we start on the next step in the recovery process.  It's time for "Packing Out" in order to get our stuff out of the way so the flooring crew can tear up the old floors and put in the new.  Movers are here now and they are packing up everything in the downstairs of our house.  That's half of our house!  They will move everything into a storage pod that was delivered to our driveway this morning. 


The unit seems a little small to me.  It will need to hold a couch, washer, dryer, sofa table, long school table and chairs, kitchen table and chairs, china cabinets, multiple book cases, plus boxes and boxes of school books, board games, pots/pans, etc.  I'm not sure if they are packing out the dishwasher and stove too but that might need to be in there too.  And this list only includes the things on the affected floor area.  The playroom is a step higher than the rest of the floor so it didn't get water damage but they are talking about packing it out too in order to keep everything from getting dirty during the demolition process.  Apparently removing wood flooring that is glued to concrete can be a very involved and messy process.  There was talk about chunks of concrete coming up with it and having to level things out before putting in the new flooring.

The kids were quite excited watching the whole delivery process. I had to get this quick video of how the truck moved the unit into place:


I called the town yesterday to see if the storage unit could be on the street but they said that is against the town code.  The lady said it would have to go in my driveway yet even then a code enforcement officer could give us a warning to have it moved in some time frame.  Hopefully this will be a quick process and it won't cause any problems with the town.

Insurance is putting us in a hotel starting tonight.  It could be up to 10 days so we've been hoping to get a hotel with a pool so the kids can have something to do during school breaks (Yes, I'm bringing all of our school stuff with us!  The school year isn't over just yet.)  We have really been hoping to stay Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine because their amazing water park is available for guests to use. There have been issues with insurance covering it but Stuart has been on the phone with insurance several times this morning and he is at Great Wolf right now with the kids trying to work out the details.  I literally just got a text message from Stuart that said he worked it all out.  He said the kids are very excited.  He's amazing! That will make for a wonderful "staycation" for the next 10 days...and I can tell you we could all use a little down time right now.

The movers are busy bees downstairs.  They discovered that a wet box had been on our dining room table (aka school table) and after sitting there for a few weeks now has a moldy spot on the wood.  Most of it wiped off but some has gotten down into the wood. 

I think I heard one of the movers say that it might take them 2 days to pack it all out.  And I think there is a concern that it won't all fit in that storage unit after all.  Just another bump in the road but I keep reminding myself that Jesus is with us and He's got this all under control. 
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10 Years Old and Still So Little

I'm still in shock at how my little baby boy who I rocked in my arms just the other day is now 10 years old.  He's grown up so quickly...but tonight I realized that he is still little too.

 Tonight after he was asleep, I went into his room to put a pile of laundry on his desk for him to put away in the morning.  I shook my head at the clutter on the rug and the dirty gray shirt just tossed in the middle of the floor.

 But as I started to pick up the shirt, I realized that there wasn't just clutter on the floor.


The gray shirt and camo bandana were blankets for two stuffed animals that Nicholas had placed on his Star Wars pillow and tucked in to their makeshift bed before he went to sleep.  Oh, melt my heart sweet boy!

One of the stuffed animals was his little brown bunny that he got from the Easter Bunny this year.  The other is a little cow that Stuart brought back to him last year from a business retreat in Glen Rose.  Stuart is back in Glen Rose for the same business retreat this week and I guess Nicholas is giving the cow some extra loving because he is missing his Daddy terribly.

He may be 10 years old but he's still a little boy.  Sweet dreams, Nicholas!
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