Experiencing Our Priceless: Reflections from Family Get Away to Great Wolf Lodge

So after years of sacrificing and penny pinching, this past week was such a rewarding and memorable time as our family got out of town to visit family and friends and stay a week at the Great Wolf Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells.  If you didn’t know, they have some pretty sweet deals in the winter (and you better believe I’m all about getting a good deal)!  Honestly, if you went back a few years, our budget was so tight that the “good deals” weren’t even an option for us without going into debt; and c’mon now, how much fun and relaxation can you truly have when you’re counting pennies and know around every corner your just slowly, but surely piling on the debt.  Yeah, not much fun at all.  Reflecting back on how thankful we are to have sacrificed then, so we can enjoy the priceless now.

So, we spent from sun up to sundown together as a family for a full week and I didn’t want to miss a beat (yeah, I am a musician)…  

I was able to watch my boys grow ever so quickly in their confidence swimming – starting in the jacuzzi pool and eventually building up the guts to face the oh so feared wave pool.  The two older boys were able to experience their first major water slides and I even got to take a quick slide date with Steph down one of the biggest and baddest slides in town – “The Howlin’ Tornado”, just as they say on their website – definitely not for the faint of heart.  

When we were done at the pool, I was able to revert back to my childhood while spending hours in the arcade and joining in the excitement of a winning 45 tickets from a single game.  This was followed by the anticipation of turning in all of our tickets for a brand new toy and candy (of which mom and dad are fully aware we could have purchased these items for half of what we spent on the games to “win” the tickets.)  But, that was beside the point, we didn’t want to just buy something, we wanted to just have fun and experience life together, and that is exactly what we did.

The greatest part of this trip was being able to experience it with a sense joy and peace…and I’m not gonna lie – I was pretty exhausted by 8:00pm each night, but, the face is we went into this trip fully expecting to drop cash on fun experiences, so we were sure to budget this out beforehand.  And this is where it all comes together….the peace of mind and joy we received from spending time as a family was all made possible because Stephanie and I were once willing to give up something we really liked, and “sacrificed” and re-defined what success means to us and because of that we are able to experience our priceless moments with peace of mind.  

How about you?  If you are straddling the line between whether or not you should make a sacrifice…we hope you are encouraged and feel empowered to jump into it.  We understand it is by no means easy, especially when there are Joneses all around who appear to be living it up.  If this is where you find yourself, just know you’re not alone and it will be worth it to, as Dave Ramsey likes to put it, “Live now like no one else, so later you can LIVE like no one else!”  We’d love to hear what you consider to be priceless.  If you have had to make any sacrifices in order to experience more joy and peace in your life, we’d love to hear your stories or current struggles.