I know only really announced it on Bsky, but I have been away the past week-ish visiting Niagara Falls on a trip with most of my family. The trip was a little last minute, as I had just went and got quite a bit of blood work done before we left.

The trip itself was more a last chance to try to have a good time with family, preceding my mom going into surgery for what we are told is a particularly dangerous hernia operation, they put off doing anything surgery wise on it for over 15 years due to higher risks of complications, and that surgery is now fast approaching on the 12th of September. We are all still hoping for the best, though it is very likely that best case scenario following the surgery, she will be recovering at home unable to lift anything or even use stairs for around 6 months. I may lose a lot of time and resources just having to help more with preparing food or cleaning the next few months. So uploads and work may end up having larger slow periods, it all depends on how things go and if others are able to step up and help out here so I can get work done on the side.

We went to see the newly opened Niagara Takes Flight attraction at Table Rock, then did a lot of walking around the falls, the behind the falls, a majority of the kind of boring tourist-y stuff first. (We live only about 1.5 hours away by car so we've seen the main stuff there plenty of times in the past.) After which we grabbed some food, did the new attraction and took some video of it which was pretty alright, walked a bit behind the Falls and then visited the casino for a lot more aimless roaming around and a tiny bit of humanity gambling.

We stayed at an airbnb the first night, the Americana the second night (mostly to see the indoor water park.)
While enjoying the arcade/waterpark stuff there, I got a call from my doctor about getting a liver ultrasound, which I'm hoping is nothing serious. And after my older sister and her bf left for home, we headed to Great Wolf Lodge for the even bigger indoor waterpark there. I had never actually heard anything about GWL outside of seeing commercials as a kid, but our parents never took us in the past because of how pricey it is, but since it was both back to school week day timing and prices had dropped, my dad deciding he'd be okay with booking at least a one night family room deal. And in the one day we were there, they enjoyed the whole lodge so much, that my mom was begging him into extending the stay an extra night.

Having never gotten to experience it as a kid, it felt a little like walking into a time capsule of what could have been. Seeing all the kids running around doing the various activities and story time, interactive wand games in the lobby, the arcade, indoor/outdoor mini golf, bowling, laser tag, I would have been in wolf themed paradise back then. I loved it all. The small wolf statue outside the gift shop had a different change of clothes on each day and when we were heading out they were wearing a rainbow poncho. The "pack"(staff) all howl in the mornings as their daily routine work chant if you were up early enough to see them.

On Saturday morning, we had to pack up briefly to check out, because there was a lot more guests coming in for the weekend, but staff helped us secure another room at the opposite end of the building, letting us get in some more waterpark time while waiting for a text confirmation of the new room number to drop the stuff off in. We mostly just stuck to enjoying the water park slides/hot tubs/lazy river, I did a bit of the MagiQuest stuff with my younger sister since I picked up the paw pass anyway for the plush and the ears, making sure to pick up an extra piece of wolf costume every so often from the gift shop for the experience of getting slightly more wolf-like the longer we were there. (And also a donkey plush.)

My mom was suffering quite a bit from headaches/migraines and general pain near the end last night since she is supposed to avoid taking certain medications/vitamins & supplements before the surgery date. So we couldn't do anything too loud or bright in the room to avoid disturbing her. The previous night I did get some quiet time to draw on iPad while fam left to do stuff downtown.

On Sunday, we did a last walk around the lodge after checking out and packing up the van, seeing the other parts of the building and outdoor golf we didn't get around to doing. We were going to do laser tag but nobody was around to play a game since the water park of the lodge was closing at 4pm so everyone was getting in one last swim. We grabbed a snack and took a last look around the trading post, before we finally took some farewell pictures and headed out to last minute sightseeing in the area with the attractions and Go-karts. And ended with early dinner at Mamma Mia's before heading home.

So now for the time being, I will be recouping a bit from all the trip stuff. I need to do some sketch streams for this week to make up for all the time I was gone. If you have an upgrade in progress and wish to request an invoice on it feel free to poke me in private, most in queue for upgrade are already started on or in progress in some form.

Expect wheel streams all week. I was holding off posting so I could get some pictures sorted out, but I may just do a big catch-up upload dump soon so I'm not busy with checking art properly uploads everyday. (I wish it was available as a mobile/iPad app instead of just pc.)

Thankyou for reading.
P.S: AwooOOooOOoo