A few years ago I was able to attend a conference in Texas and it was held at the Gaylord Texan. After I stayed there I told myself that someday I wanted to bring my family back as it was so beautiful.
We were lucky enough to find a package deal they had for their summer Smurftastic program. Not only did the package include your stay but also passes to their water park, a Smurf scavenger hunt around the property and a few other perks.
The kids and I had looked at pictures online and they were excited but as we pulled up the car filled with shreeks and screams! They were so excited and couldn't believe how bit it was.
Let me just say the pictures don't do it justice.
While Jarrett checked in, the kids and I waited in the lobby and talked about all the fun things we wanted to see at the hotel. To our surprise Dad decided that we were not going to repeat our experience from the first night at the hotel and decided we needed a bit bigger room.
When we got up to our room and opened the door, to us, it was like Kevin McCalister in Home Alone 2 when he's in New York and checks into The Plaza and gets the Presidential Suite room. While we didn't have anything like the presidential suite, we were extremely excited and blessed with the size and features in our room. In fact it came with a dining room table that was bigger than the one we had at home. I guess "everything is bigger in Texas"!
Here's me trying to get a picture of Isabelle's reaction to the hotel. She couldn't stand still.
Finally I got her to pose on our balcony. She was pretty excited!
The kids loved the balcony. It really was a pretty view.
This was the view out our room.
And another view
After getting settled in our room we walked around the property and started exploring. We found Smurf Village and the girls LOVED playing in it.
Inside the Smurf's house
Here's one of the water towers inside the hotel that had several Smurf characters on it.
They also had a Smurf life-sized board game.
Kind of like a Chutes and Ladders game, only Smurf style.
Meanwhile Gabriel and Michael were taking pictures
Gabriel was trying to perfect his selfie game. Personally I think he has some work to do.
Here's another great one of Gabriel, and take a look at Michael. I said, try to be a little less obvious you are posing.
He just said, "WHAT?" and couldn't stop laughing.
Another exciting feature in the hotel were the several trains. Madelyn LOVED them!
Yep Gabriel still trying to perfect his selfie game. Here Dad snuck up on him and tried to mimic how he looked. I think Dad did a pretty good job!
Madelyn watching the trains, while Michael patiently waited for her to move on.
There were Smurf statues everywhere and Isabelle loved to find them. Even though it was over 100 degrees there, Madelyn insisted on dragging her blanket all over.
Here was another train set that was 2 levels and went over water features. It was really neat.
In the center of the hotel was a huge Star and at night it glowed different colors. To even guess how big this star is, I'd probably be way underestimating to say it was probably 50 feet wide.
Another thing we found walking around the hotel was this Texas Longhorn. Madelyn was convinced he was alive and kept looking for him to say MOO.
Gabriel decided he wanted to take pictures and actually I'm kind of glad he did. While I'm not a huge fan of seeing myself in photos, I've realized these last few years that I don't really have too many of me with the kids. So here's a classic photo of how I try to capture our family memories.
I love this picture of the kids and me. Hard to believe they are getting so big!
I'm starting to feel like I'm shrinking!
After we check in and got settled we met Darold and Barb at the Bass Pro Shop just down the road from our hotel. While we have them here in Phoenix, I have NEVER seen a Bass Pro Shop as big as this one. It was a monstrosity.
One of the other cool things inside the store was this HUGE shark which is a replica to an actual shark caught by an actual fishing boat.
Here are the stats on the shark! On a 130 pound line the shark weighed 5500 pounds and was 27 feet long! Can you even imagine thinking you had caught a huge fish only to find it was a GREAT WHITE SHARK? That's the sort of thing, Jaws nightmares are made of!
There was also a big aquarium we got to see and the kids loved seeing how big the fish there were. The boys decided they had to get a fishing pole for their souvenir and that they were going to take up fishing as a hobby.
After visiting the Bass Pro Shop we were treated to some yummy Texas BBQ. I can't remember the name of the place but it was tasty!!!!
They actually smoke the food outside and you get to pick what you want as you walk into the restaurant. It smelled SO yummy!
While the food was great the company even better. It was our final meal with Darold and Barb and their daughter Tammy and her husband Terry. We enjoyed so much getting to see them. We were sad to say goodbye but hope we can visit them again.
We went to sleep that night with yummy food in our tummies and our hearts filled with love and gratitude for getting to see family we would love to see more often.
We awoke the next morning ready to spend a big day celebrating our Country's birthday. The Reunion Tower, the Museum of Nature and Science, fireworks and more!
Until next time
Angie
No comments:
Post a Comment