Schlitterbahn Trip

Our last family trip of the summer was another trip to Schlitterbahn. It's so hot here that any trip we take has to involve water and we like the water park at Schlitterbahn a lot better than the one at Sea World so we decided to take one last trip for the summer.
Caleb had a blast! There is so much that he loves to do there. He is like a little fish swimming around in the water. This trip he liked going around the "wave pool/ lazy river" with us that he has been a little uncomfortable with in the past. He loved the "pirate ship" where he goes down slides all by himself. He went down some slides where he was flying down and I was getting nervous but he was laughing like crazy. We also snuck him on to a ride we could do together called the "Family Blaster." One of the lifeguards told me that that was one of the only rides that we would all be able to do together, so after waiting for 30 minutes, we saw that you couldn't ride if you were under 42 inches. We were like, you have to be kidding me. Then the people in front of us suggested just throwing him in a life jacket and jumping on the ride like we didn't know. We did that and ended up being able to go. It is a giant circular tub that we sat in with Caleb wedged between us. You go down these roaring rapids and then get shot up to the top of the ride. I was screaming but Travis and Caleb were both laughing. It was so much fun to be able to do something all together.
At about 7:00 we decided to take him home and we pretty much had to drag him to the car. We were on the road for about about a half hour and he was out. It's about a 2 hour drive for us to Schlitterbahn. I wish it was closer because we would get season passes and go a lot more frequently. It's a really family friendly park. They have free parking and let you take in your own food and drinks. I was pretty proud of myself because I made chicken salad sandwiches and noodle salad, neither of which I had ever made before, and they were pretty delicious. I always bring way more food than I think we will eat and we usually end up eating all of it anyways. I think it has something to do with being in the sun and being outside all day. Anyways, that was the last trip we will be able to take this summer and it was a very successful one.

Schlitterbahn

Yesterday we loaded up and traveled to Schlitterbahn for the day. It was the first time in a while that Travis and I were off work on the same day so we decided to celebrate. Schlitterbahn is so awesome because it has a ton of things for kids of all ages...even ones Caleb's age. Caleb has always been pretty fearless when it comes to water, but he really surprised us yesterday. They had a huge rainstorm that flooded New Braunfels, so 3/4 of the park was closed. We weren't sure how Caleb was going to do with the few things we had to do but he had a blast...it was almost better for him just to have a few things to do all day rather than last time we went when we tried to do everything at the park.
They have this pirate ship that has water shooting out of it and you can climb up onto the pirate ship and go down 4 different slides that they have. They used to let babies ride on the laps of their parents but won't let you have lap riders anymore so we were concerned about taking Caleb on it, but we figured we'd give it a try and have one parent at top to send him down and one at the bottom to catch him. We sent him down and as soon as he got on the slide he flipped over so he was going down on his tummy. I was frantically waiting at the bottom to catch him and when he came down he jumped up and was like, "Again, again!" We kept taking him up all day. Every time we'd put him on the slide, he'd flip over on his tummy and go off down the slide. As you saw him retreating down the slide, he would shoot you a smile before rounding the first bend. It was crazy! They also had a kiddie pool that had slides on it that he kept going down. It was about a foot deep with water. He started crawling around on his hands in the kiddie pool with just his head sticking up out of water. We were following him all around hysterically, but he was having a blast. He is definitely a water baby.
The one bad thing is that he refused to take a nap. Last time we went we found a spot in the shade and he laid his head down on my shoulder and fell right to sleep. This time we kept taking him out and then bringing him back to the shade to try to get him to go to sleep (probably from 1-4 that we kept trying) and finally we just thought, forget it. He can sleep when we get in the car. Sure enough as soon as we got on the highway he was out and slept all the way home.