Soak City

The last couple of days here have been a blast – and wet. Reese and Carter got an early birthday present to go to Soak City, a huge water park here complete with waterslides, tube rides, a massive wave pool, a huge lazy river and a kids’ play area with about a million gallons of water per second spraying out at you. It was like Cultus Lake waterslides times a hundred. Well, we wanted to go but it was just a matter of finding the right day (ie. cooler day). We have found the temperature varies about 1 degree here so far, so threw caution to the wind and decided Monday was as good a day as any. We packed up and headed out.

The day turned out to be perfect. It was the first day we have actually seen anything resembling a cloud, and the clouds got bigger and bigger throughout the morning. By 11am the sun was covered and it even starting to rain (about 10 drops an hour)! We didn’t care, it was cooler (in the 90’s) which made the day completely tolerable and so much fun, and the park wasn’t that busy. It felt like a story right out of the Bible where God provided (cloud and) rain for his people when they needed it most!

We’ve gotta tell one story that we can laugh at now. It was just after lunch when Reese was finished eating and wanted to get back into the water. We were just beside the .lazy river – which was the length of a football field and wasn’t really that lazy at all – and Reese starting inching towards the stairs. We told her to wait as we were just finished our burger and cleaning up. We turned our heads for two seconds and next thing we hear is “Hey mommy! Help!” We looked and saw Reese floating down the river! Luckily for us Reese had a lifejacket on and was surrounded by about 7 adults who seemed to wonder why a 3-year-old would be floating down the river by herself. Michelle rushed into the water to ‘rescue’ Reese (she was totally fine as the adults and a lifeguard just pulled her aside to Michelle), and we went on with our day. Let’s just say we gave Reese a good talking to! First Carter, now Reese….hmmm…maybe it’s not the kids! We went on and had such a fun rest of our day. Reese found a kid’s slide about 20 feet long that she did over and over and over…and over, and Carter couldn’t keep his eyes off of some kids playing basketball.

Today was a little more relaxing (more relaxing than a fun day at Soak City?) and we went to the pool twice – without any incidents we might add! One event highlighting today that we only found out about this morning was that it was Wynona’s birthday (Reese’s favourite doll, who trekked through Hezekiah’s tunnel with us and floated in the Dead Sea). Reese asked if we got decorations, and we hadn’t unfortunately because we didn’t even know it was her birthday, so we improvised with a little toilet paper for streamers and cut-out paper flowers. Wynona had a pretend beautiful birthday cake and even got some presents from Reese (which looks eerily similar to toys from her closet). We thought it was over but Reese told us that today was only her birthday, and that tomorrow her birthday party awaits. Maybe this is where we put our foot down?