Well, for us it’s finally back to school time. Today I sent my little guy off to grade 1 and some exciting new adventures. But not before sending off summer with a bang.

I’m sure that, like me, your Facebook feed last week was inundated with all your friend’s back to school photos of their kids. That is unless their kids went to the same school that mine does, which is still under construction. A couple of days before the first day of school, we received a message that the school’s construction was not complete (no big surprise there) and that as a result, the start of school would be delayed for a week. Now, that I did not see coming.

But finally, the first day of school is here. Part of me is excited to see my little man head off to this new adventure. The other (bigger) part is really going to miss the time we were able to spend together last year when he was only in school every second day. A lot.

So when we got the news that the start of school would be delayed, I started to wonder what we would do to keep busy. Then my wife mentioned a special she had seen at Great Wolf Lodge, somewhere we’d talked about going many times, but never had. There was a great sale because it was back to school week, which also meant no crowds. Cheap and no crowds? Sounds good to me.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take a lot of photos in the water park given that, at any given time, from any direction, you’re likely to get water dumped on your head. So we grabbed a couple of selfies before heading in. As you can see, it wasn’t exactly busy! The only downside, was there were no lineups… which was awesome… BUT that also means, repeated climbing of large staircases followed by twisty rides down the slides… awesome… but a little sickening after four hours.

Just a word of advice: Getting in the wave pool to take a break from water slides and the ensuing motion sickness, is a little like getting in a boat on the ocean to cure car sickness. The lazy river works much better.

Of course I couldn’t resist being so close to Niagara Falls without heading down to see them. Especially at night, which I had never seen before. When I told my son this plan, he looked at me so sincerely and asked “Daddy, did you take me here to go on the water slides, or to go take pictures of the waterfall because you’re a photographer?” After a good laugh, I assured him going to the waterfall was an afterthought and the water park was my first priority. But I was glad to know he understood that we had to go :-).

And so today is the first day of school, but what a great way to end an already amazing summer. While my son makes the transition back to school, I also have my own transition to make. I’ll really miss being a part-time stay at home dad, it was the best thing I’ve ever done. But now I’ll have the time that I need to focus on my business and the next adventure that life has in store… and to catch up on some Netflix (kidding).