Getting too old for the waterpark

Yesterday we took the kids on our annual trip to a nearby waterpark. It’s something we’ve been doing for several years. And every year that evil waterpark reminds us just how old were getting.

As the kids get older they think they are mature enough to go off on their own. At 9. And 7. Yeah right. We spent most of the day chasing after them as one ran to the wave pool, another ran to the kiddie pool, and the other was chasing after the teenagers. No amount of screaming “STAY TOGETHER!” was working. I’m starting to serious think about putting them on leashes next year.

At one point Lee was chasing Caleb down the body slide. He was flying in to the shallow pool at the bottom of the slide and scraped his elbow on the bottom of the pool. He had a nice flap of skin hanging off his elbow and was dripping blood down his arm. Good times.

Shortly after that we raced down this big slide with four lanes. It was Lee, Skyler, Caleb and me. The kids could lay on their mats and push off with their feet. Lee and I were too big so we had to try to jump on the slide and get enough momentum to push us down. We both got stuck. Lee scraped up his other elbow trying to push off. I scraped up all ten toes. We were a mess.

Later we went on the big toilet bowl (a term the kids officially coined for it). You have four people in a innertube. You go flying down a water slide landing in a big cone where you go clear up one side until you feel like you’re about to fall out. Then you fly down and up the other side. You do this a few times before you finally get “flushed” out the bottom. Somehow Lee caught his knee on the slide and it ripped off a scab he had from softball. So that’s the waterslides 3. Lee 0.

The wave pool was no safer. Although they had four lifeguards on duty and only clear innertubes so the lifeguards could see the bottom of the pool, they were useless. Caleb was on a tube and floated all the way to the end of the wave pool where the waves were made. Lee was standing on the side of the pool watching him. With the rocking of the waves Caleb fell out of his tube. As soon as he was out of it another kid snagged the tube. Caleb was in water way too deep for him. Water that was difficult to swim in because of all the rocking of the waves. And as he came up out of the water after each wave he often got caught under somebody else’s innertube. Lee tapped the lifeguard and said, “You’ve got somebody in the water that needs you.” The lifeguard looked over at Caleb and then looked away. So Lee dove head first in to the water, in to the see of rocking people and innertubes, grabbed Caleb and dragged him to where he could reach. Lee thought somebody would yell at him for diving in because there were signs that clearly said “No diving.” I would have loved to of seen the teeny-bopper lifeguard brave enough to walk up to yell at Lee at the point. Instead a lifeguard came up to Lee and apologized. The lifeguard said he was going to talk to the other lifeguard Lee had tapped. She definitely should have done her job.

So in two weeks Caleb has tried to drown in a pool. TWICE. I’ve already scoured the recreation guide to get him in to swim lessons at the indoor pool over the winter.

But other than scraped up elbows, knees, and toes and an (another) almost drowning incident, we had a great time at the waterpark. This year we brought 16 of our closest friends. The park reserved a whole section for us to relax and gossip in. There were tons of kids for our kids to hang out with. And the adults got to chit chat.

But it was exhausting. I went to bed at 11:30 last night. And woke up at 11:30 am this morning. The waterpark gets more and more exhausting the older I get.

Related posts:

1. Thankful for the lifeguards Today suck
2. Day 2 of Mr. Accident Prone After Satu

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.