Wilderness Water Park: Smoky Mountains

For the kids Fall Break, we headed up to one of our favorite destinations: The Smoky Mountains. This year, thanks to Gene and Lonna (who seriously rock), we were able to score an amazing condo at the famous Wilderness Adventure Park. It's very hard to get a place at this park and you have to stay at the resort to take park in the many fun activities for families. Wilderness is most known for it's enormous inside waterpark and entertainment center (consisting of indoor glow golf, huge arcade, rock wall, bowling, a giant treehouse, laser tag and a ropes course). I have been wanting to take the kids there for a couple years now and I'm so grateful that we finally got to go. We went for 3 days and lets just say we all had a BLAST!!! The kids had so much fun at the indoor waterpark (well, so did the adults too). Sam was still too small and couldn't do the main waters slides, but he was still able to splash around in the toddler areas. Lucas, was just finally tall enough to go on the majority of the tube slides with an adult and he LOVED them so much. He mostly tackled the slides with daddy and papa, but I loved watching how much fun they had together. The waterpark also had a huge wave pool and surfing/boogie board simulator. We were so grateful for Papa and Grandma Lenning who came with us and helped out at the waterpark. We had so much fun splashing around with them too! Papa is such a good sport and did all the water slides! While at Wilderness, we also ran into some of our amazing neighbors back home, the Harnens and Rowlands. We enjoyed getting to spend some time with them as well. I took a ton of pictures from the waterpark...I'm already looking forward to returning someday soon. :)

This was Lucas' favorite play area in the whole park. He loved the big buckets of water that would dump out every few minutes. Sam, on the other hand, didn't dig this section as much and was rather scared of the dumping buckets. :)

This was a surfing and boogie boarding simulator...Les was the only one to try this in the group!

Lucas loved standing there and spraying with the water hose and wheel. 

Sam much preferred this little toddler area with water sprinklers, a small pool, swing, slide and  teater totter.  It was perfect for his age and size.

It was a busy day at the waterpark and our little 3 year old wore out pretty fast from all the water fun. :)

Running into our new neighbors, The Rowland Family, made our trip extra special. Collier and Lucas are both 5 and go to school together...they definitely bonded this trip! We had so much fun with The Rowlands.

A sleepy Sam on daddy in the hot tub.

LOVE this picture of new buddies that will likely grow up with each other, so cute!

And there dumps the huge buckets of water...can see Collier and Lucas running from the flood, ha!

Daddy and Lucas had a blast hitting the water slides together.

Only the biggest of boys could do this water slide. Mark and Les did the "big, dark, huge drop off" slide. Our little guys  did not make the height requirement for this one, which was fine by mommy. :)

Papa joined in on some water slide fun and it was great having him around too.

Our neighbors and friends the Rowland family. :)

Daddy and Papa trying to convince Sam that the water buckets aren't scary. :)