Our Christmas Kick-Off

For the past couple years, we've kicked off the Christmas season at the Potawatomi Inn at Pokagon State Park near Angola, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite family gathering places. It's about a two-hour drive, which is far enough so we feel we're far from home, but doesn't take too long to get there, so it's not too taxing on the kids.

The rooms are nice. Not huge, but more than adequate for what we need. It has a pool that the kids spent a lot of time in. This was Allie's first experience in a pool and she was cracking up as Dorene and I tossed her back and forth. Anna and Cameron are absolute fish in the water and are never ready to get out of the pool but could go for hours.

There is also a really cool craft room that Anna especially likes. You can choose from tons of plain wooden, foam, or paper crafts which you then paint, color, etc. Anna and Cameron both made gifts for their teachers and some others. Cameron likes it but would prefer to go next door to the game room where I introduced him to Ms. Pac Man (I scored 135,700 thank you very much).

The one attraction that Pokagon is famous for is one we actually didn't do, and that's the toboggan run. Neither Anna or Cameron wanted to do it yet, although I think by next year they'll want to give it a try. No big deal, we're not going to force them to have fun ("hey, we drove all this way, you WILL try it"), so if they'd rather just hang out in the motel, that's fine.

The pool sufficiently wore the kids out so both nights we were there they slept quite good. We took our own food and ate at the buffet at the Inn on Saturday, which was pretty good. The place has a very down home feel and is very family friendly, lots of people come to kick-off Christmas as we noticed several carrying in presents during check-in. We'll definitely be back next year.