Don't worry about me, I'm at the bar

Being down South, we know how to play with our children.  Not only does our Chuck E Cheese serve beer but our Great Wolf Lodge does also.  Why?

Because parents want to bring their children there and create the memory for THE KIDS, not for us.  If we are in a slight brain fog most of the time, that's a good thing.

We can listen to that bell dinging for two straight days, and laugh each and every time the kids, like little Pavlovian dogs run over to get doused by water - laughing a little harder and the little kid that busts it before he makes it over to X marks the spot.

We can smile and smell out 20 bucks per kid for the arcade and smile even bigger when they come back with a bag of 73 tootsie rolls as the reward for all their "work" in the arcade.  Especially with this proud owner of the pucker powder and tootsie rolls is the kid you are taking to the dentist the next day.

We can also think it's pretty funny watching our kids stalk the person walking around in dry clothes, waiting until that perfect moment when they turn their bucked and douse them.  Then wonder why in the world would the person walk under that gauntlet of kids with buckets of water.  I mean, really?

We can relax in a chaise and watch a full parade of people in bathing suits, who shouldn't be in THOSE SMALL bathing suits run by you with little Arnold hoping to make it to the infernal dinging bucket - especially when they both bust it and Mom pops out of her bathing suit while little Arnold is crying that he missed that dousing (not to mention, there's another 1,564 douses during his stay at the Great Wolf Lodge)

We can sit and not feel comfortable in our bathing suit, or find it funny trying to keep everything in place as you ride down the Howling Tornado with your kids.  Better yet we think it's a good idea after some time at the Lodge (bar) that we'll ride down the rides with our kids and then run with them to bust it in front of the dousing bucket.

We can sit through story time with all the freaky looking characters, some mechanical some real, and it's the real ones that have probably been to the bar too because they seem to really enjoy sneaking up on you and scaring the hell out of you (insert freaky looking fox here)

We can go to the buffet and argue that they really don't need the prime rib from the menu, and no everyone is not getting the $16.99 Dippin Dots.

We can go to a small hotel room and watch the kids jumping from bed to bed, finding tootsie roll wrappers in our sheets and stepping in wet puddles of carpet for a night.

Yes, there is a reason we pay 4.99 a beer at the Great Wolf Lodge.  It's to preserve that memory for our little kids, and to create the fuzzy one for us, otherwise we wouldn't go back.  Some say that friends don't let friends drink alone, the same is true for the Great Wolf Lodge, why suffer by yourself when you can bring a friend to suffer with you.  Or at least talk about the one lone guy walking by you in a Speedo - now I want to see him go down the Howling Tornado.