Surprise Weekend Getaway

This past weekend we spent Saturday and Sunday at Fort Rapids Indoor water park resort.  It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision.  Tuesday evening our original Saturday plans fell apart, and Ben and I realized that we had a 3-day weekend (a 4-day weekend for the kids) with nothing planned.  The kids would go crazy without some type of outing, and we would too.  When we started to explore options, we thought maybe we would spend Saturday at Fort Rapids - only Maria had ever been to this water park before and it was fairly close to home - only an hour away.  Further research showed that for just a little bit more that the day passes price, you could spend the night and then play at the water park on both Saturday and Sunday.  So we made reservations but didn't tell the kids.  We wanted to surprise them.  We don't surprise them enough (probably because I'm such a planner), and there won't be too many more years that we can pull this off.


So Saturday morning after we picked up the kids from a sleepover and returned home after Sam's basketball game, we told them about the plan.  They were pretty excited, which made it worth it to us.  We got to the water park around 12:30, and the kids played for almost four hours, during which time Ben and I were eventually able to check into our room and I even took a short nap.  We went to eat dinner at Easton, which was only about 15 minutes away but worth it to not have to eat at the resort restaurant.  After dinner, we played again for a couple of hours (I even went on the water slides with the kids which I used to never do), and then we returned to the room.  We were all asleep by 10:00.

Sunday morning Ben and I got up early for our morning runs - he at a nearby park and me at the hotel "gym."  The kids slept in.  We were at the park when they opened, and we were able to get hold of the few valuable double inner tubes, so that each kid could ride with each adult and then we raced each other on a couple of the slides.  These inner tubes were impossible to get on Saturday all day, so the kids were really excited that we all got to ride together.  We left the park around lunchtime and came home. 

It was a fun getaway, and the kids had a blast, but I would not spend the night there again.  It just wasn't that nice of a hotel.  But I'm still glad we went.  Now its back to school and work, and with the snow outlook it doesn't look like we'll be getting very many more days off for a while!