Our Annual Family Trip to Woodloch Pines in the Poconos Rocked As Usual

This past weekend, my family packed up the car and headed to Hawley, Pennsylvania for a mini vacation. This marks the third year in a row that we visited Woodloch Pines with my wife’s entire family (her two sisters’ families and my in-laws). It’s basically four days of campy fun for eight adults and seven kids.

Thankfully the weather was near perfect. It rained just once, on Monday for about half the day. But other than that, we all had an amazing time. The kids just love spending a few days with their cousins, doing all sorts of crazy fun things like Go Karts, Bocce tournaments, paddle boats, basketball, a huge indoor jungle gym, miniature golf, and more.

My favorite part, of course, is the eating. It’s an all-you-can-eat, all-meals-included type of resort. So three times a day we got to head over to our private table (we’ve got a really nice private room actually) and eat till we’re ready to hurl. Our waitress Lauren was fantastic this year. She took awesome care of all of us, despite the four million different dietary restrictions we had. She was super observant and careful with Jason’s nuts and seeds allergies, and definitely helped us feel a bit safer.

Other than eating, I probably spent way too much time at the batting cages. I just love standing in the cage, smacking fast ball after fast ball. I managed to do decently in the fast pitch (65 mph). I normally bat lefty (everything else I do is righty, though), but I tried swinging right-handed for a bit too and didn’t do too badly. I even hit about half of the pitches in the fast cage.

I tried a number of new things this year, including a Kettle Bell workout on Monday morning. Allie, her sister Debbie and my brother-in-law Steve all joined in for the 8 a.m. workout. I’d done Kettle Bell workouts before, but mostly from a weight-training persepective. This was more a cardio workout with the kettle bells. The nice part was we had the class outside on the beach right by the lake. It was really gorgeous. The bad part was… the actual workout. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great workout. It just nearly killed me!

Overall, we just had a blast doing the various activities both indoor and outdoor, including some fun team trivia events, where the winners get Woodloch medals. We’ve already booked our spot for next year to keep the family tradition alive! Here’s a look at some in-action photos from our extended weekend.

I tried rock climbing for the first time ever. Probably made it about halfway and just kept losing my grip.

 

Jason, Ryan, and I loved playing Bocce. We even entered a tournament (under the team name “Yellow Pancakes”) and made it to overtime in round two.

 

Jason continued to ram me like mad in the Bumper Cars.

 

Ryan really got into basketball and was making basket after basket in the gym.

 

Aw, yeah. Apparently white men can jump.

 

Ryan and I were set to take first place in the Go Karts!

 

In the final lap, we bumped past my nephew Max to take the lead and win! (Shhh… don’t tell anyone we were a full lap behind.)

 

My trivia team took first place and brought home the gold!

 

For one night, we all “dressed up” for a fancy dinner type. At least long enough to snap this photo.

 

The hardest part of the vacation? As always, getting back to work. After being served breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a few days straight (the coffee is dead-on awesome, by the way), it’s really hard to get back to reality. Guess I just need to suck it up for another 11 1/2 months!

Have you ever gone on a vacation with your extended family?

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