Water parks and scary slides

Taking kids to the water park (or anywhere else for that matter!) always sounds better in theory. It never turns out the way I expect. Fun and relaxing? Well, sure. You THINK it will be. Is it ever? No. Not for me anyway.

Saturday we took the kids to a local water park/pool. We had 4 free tickets and wanted to use them before school started. We still had to pay $20 for two more kids' tickets! It is EXPENSIVE to NOT be a resident. Highway robbery! We made our way to some chairs and proceeded to make ourselves "pool ready". The place is small enough, and Katherine and Kaleb finally old enough, that we let them go off on their own. They quickly made their way towards the water slides. Of course, being the paranoid mom that I am, I worried that they would somehow be knocked unconscious, drown, or panic on the slides, and I wouldn't even know if because they were off on their own.

While the older two went off to die at an early age, Kris and I took the younger girls to the lazy river. This was going to be great. Set them in the inner tube, climb on the other side, and let the river pull us along. Completely relaxing, right? Not so much. BOTH girls (ages 7 and 4) started freaking out! Here we are, causing a line to form because our water-loving girls decided this would be a perfect time to find fear of water. Kris and I are thinking "What is wrong with these girls?" We FINALLY got them situated and started floating along. The first 5 minutes were fun. Then Olivia (the four year old) started squirming and trying to move around and fall into the water. Mom was just a little on edge! After three trips around we stopped and let the little girls play in the "baby" section. Abbey was immediately bored.

After a while, Kris tried to get me to go to the water slides. I told him I didn't want to. We discussed it, which led to him going off to find Kaleb, who he was hoping could force me to go on the slides. You see, I used to LOVE water slides. They were so fun and totally something I could just go and do. But for some reason, along with other fears that I cannot explain, I was terrified. My 8 and 9 year old kids were having a blast on the slides, and I sat there staring at them, wondering what happened to the person I used to be. Kris succeeded in finding Kaleb, who took my hand and led me to the slides. There were two of them together...one was open and one was closed. I told Kaleb there was NO WAY I would do the closed, dark one. I gathered all my courage and went down the green, open slide. It was OK. Totally NOT as fun as I remember water slides being. Kaleb was proud of me and then immediately tried to convince me to go down the dreaded blue slide. In a moment of sheer insanity, I agreed. What was I thinking????

I have never been claustrophobic. Never. But that slide...? Let's just say that I hated it and it took 10 minutes to beat back the panic attack that ensued. My heart was racing, and I couldn't breathe after being in that thing! 10 years ago I would have LOVED it! Needless to say, I did NOT go on any more slides!

All in all, while stressful and not as IDEAL as I would have liked, it was a good day. The kids had a blast and that was worth it all. Some of you are newer readers, so you may not remember the horrible sunburns that Kris and I got last summer in Florida. It was bad. Very bad. We had lathered on the sunscreen and figured that the reason we burned so bad is because we were in the ocean for 4 hours, and didn't reapply the sunblock. So, when we applied the SAME sunblock to ourselves yesterday and all the kids, we felt safe from the sun in Missouri. We came home only to realize the sunblock did not work. In fact, it would seem that this sunblock actually encouraged the sun to scorch us. ALL OF US. We were all burnt!! Abbey, Kaleb and Kris got it the worst. Kris looks like a lobster. It's almost as if the sunblock we were using was mislabeled and we were instead using something that encouraged the sun's rays to fry our horribly white skin.

To end the day, I took Katherine and my mother-in-law to see Ramona and Beezus. Katherine and I missed out on Toy Story 3 a few weeks ago because Kat was sick. So when I heard Ramona and Beezus was coming out, I knew it would be perfect for us. I read all the Ramona books growing up and introduced Katherine to them. The movie was adorable! It was entertaining and heart-warming. I cried. Four times. I loved the movie! And Ramona? JUST LIKE MY ABBEY!! She's a free spirit, with her own style. She's different and proud of it. I so wish I had taken Abbey with us! She would have loved the movie. I'm hoping that it comes out in time for Christmas.