Goodbye, Dayton!

Well, we haven't quite left Ohio, but we are out of Dayton!  Ted officially finished his out processing on Monday, and yesterday morning we packed up our remaining possessions and s-l-o-w-l-y made our way out of Dayton!  We had hoped to leave around 11 a.m.  HA!  Well, after doing the following:

• Go to post office to mail packages.
• Get gas.
• Stop at BX to get Ted swim trunks.
• Eat lunch at Chick-Fil-A (seeing at least 5-6 families we knew!).
• Go to library to turn in one last overdue book and pay off our fines.
• Run the milk bottles to Dorothy Lane Market so we could get our $4.50 back.
• Stop at Dayton Mall to let Ted zip inside to return the router so we could avoid being charged big bucks for taking it with us.
• Unload 3 children to go into the Dayton Mall to use the restroom.

...after all that, we finished the drive to the Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio, arriving about 2 1/2 hours later than planned.  By 4 p.m. the kids and Ted were suited up and heading to enjoy the water park area (Kenna wearing a gym suit, since her swimsuit is apparently AWOL) while I stayed in the suite with an overly tired Zaden, hoping he would nap.  Thirty minutes of fussing and screaming later (maybe he would have fallen asleep if I hadn't gotten a text on my phone that was left in the room with him!), he and I joined the others, where he sat in awe watching everything from his stroller view.  I played in the wave pool with Lucan for awhile, and then Ted took over while I rode a couple of slides with Kenna.  I traded with Ted so he could ride some bigger rides, and then after a major shuffle trying to get everyone in one place at one time, we left around 6:15 in search of dinner.

Thanks to many dear friends at church, we were presented with a gift card worth over $500 for this adventure!  It more than paid for our suite and water park passes, so we got some pizza for the kids for dinner and ate in our room.  (We still have $$ left for some treats later on!)  Ted went out to get Chipotle for himself and me (just because it sounded so good and there is one just down the street) and also got a flat of water bottles.

We let the older 3 kids go back to the water play area while we bedded the little ones, and then I joined them for some riding fun.  I had about 45 minutes with them and then came back to the room so Ted could finish out the night enjoying some "big kid" fun, too.  He had fallen asleep, ha!  If I had known that, maybe I would have kept playing!  But it was good to get a shower before crashing to sleep.  I think we were all out by 10:30!

We had leftover pizza for breakfast and cleared out the room.  I'm here with Zaden, who is getting a FABULOUS nap, and then we'll join the others for a few more hours of water fun before we hit the road to St. Louis.  We'll be staying in a hotel there tonight and then driving the rest of the way to Kansas tomorrow to spend a few days with our friends Craig and Mimi.  

We are grateful for this opportunity--honestly, with 6 children, it is not something we would have pursued if it hadn't been for the gift card.  It would have been a lot of money to spend, and it would have been hard to justify that when it's hard to get one's "money's worth" with little ones and taking turns watching them and so on.  But it has been delightful to have the chance to make some family memories as we close the chapter on our time in Ohio and prepare for our next adventure!