4th annual waterpark adventure

Elijah in his "factory!"

Dan and I wrestled about whether or not to take our annual waterpark adventure this year since finances are super-tight, but we decided to just do it. We began this tradition before Sammy turned one, so this was our fourth year! We did a lot of reminiscing about previous years and how much we all enjoy this tradition.

I love capturing this photo every year. The boys peeking in, anticipating the fun as we check in..

The first thing we do every year is...JUMP ON THE BED! The little boys and I jump our hearts out and Dan pretends to be mad. "Daddy, LOOK! We're JUMPING ON THE BED!" "NOO! No jumping on the bed!" This continues until our leg muscles are weak. I love how happy this makes our boys. 

Another "tradition" is climbing up to the top bunk (this year it was Elijah's bed...his first time sleeping on the top bunk!) and taking a photo.

Our "first supper" with poses.

Sammy continued the jumping by JUMPING ON THE COUCH!

And posing, multi-socked, with feet on table!

"Sammy, give your brother a kiss!"

Waiting to get into the waterpark.

Elijah has always loved water and waterparks (minus being splashed in the face). He gets super excited about coming here every year. He anticipates it and loves it more than any other kid on the planet, I promise. Every time we drive by this waterpark (which is often), he excitedly says, "MY FACTORY! There's my factory! When oh when oh WHEN can we go back to my factory?!" 

Once we get inside, he runs around in a systematic pattern. As I mentioned, he does not like being splashed in the face and he becomes very anxious about it. He calculates when the big bucket is going to drop water over the splash area and plans his fun around that. The math that must take place inside his head!

Gradually over the years he has become braver, which has been so fun to see. The first year, he waded in the 4-inch pool. The second year, he went down the baby slide. The third year, he went down the little orange slide. And this year? He went down the twisty blue slide all by himself! AND he went down one of the "big" tube slides with either Dan or me, which he LOVED! He was literally all over the place, wanting to go down the big slide and go around the lazy river and swim in the wave pool and play in the kid area. He was never still.

Sammy? Wanted to do NOTHING. This photo captured one of the only moments when he left his chair.

We think it mostly has to do with his independence and not wanting anyone to tell him what to do. I know he would have fun...he HAS had fun doing these very things. The first day, Dan and I worked so hard to get even a single toe of his into the water. The only thing he would do without screaming was snuggle his swim towel.

The second day, we decided not to say a single thing about getting into the water but it did no good. He loved wearing his goggles on his head, but refused to get close to the pool.

Last night after our waterparking, we headed over to the MOA to ride a few rides and have dinner. The ferris wheel is one of the rides Sammy will tolerate (only if he sits with Mama), so we rode that before dinner.

At the boys' request, we had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. The boys enjoyed the monkeys and butterflies and the rainstorm.

The boys took a calming, warm, silly bath before bed.

And enjoyed a bit of a movie.

Snuggle time with my boys!

We had two hours to spend at the waterpark this morning before checking out. As expected, Elijah ran around the place like crazy. Sammy sat in his chair and munched on an apple.

We had an amazing adventure! We went out for our typical IHOP breakfast afterward and also experienced our typical super-tiredness after that. We got home and literally went promptly to bed and slept for 2+ hours. All of us.

We are thankful for this experience! We love our boys so much and we cannot wait for next year's waterpark adventure.