To Hell and Back

A week ago, one of my good friends and former neighbors sent out a group e-mail announcing that they were spending two days at Schlitterbahn, did anyone want to join them. In a moment of sleep-deprived insanity, I sent the e-mail to B and asked if he thought I should take the kids. I figured he’d say “Are you kidding me? That place is expensive! We need blinds in the windows before we need to go there.” Instead, his reply was, “Sounds good. Have fun.”

He basically threw me under the bus.

Then I made the mistake of telling the kids about it. And once you tell kids about a trip to Schlitterbahn, there is no turning back. They spent the week singing the song from the commercial, and the big girls regaled Campbell with stories of HOWAWESOMEITISTOGOTHERE!

I decided to approach the trip calmly: I made plans for meeting our friends and parking, packed a cooler with food, and organized my pool bag. And it worked, at first. We rode rides, we met up with our friends right on schedule, we stayed together as a group, the little kids didn’t freak out. It was all mostly good. It was also hot and crowded. And we walked more than we rode. Did I mention it was hot and crowded? I get panicky in crowds and heat, especially when trying too keep my eye on four kids and five inner tubes, and I may have had some not very good moments, but I’m not saying.

As we went along, I mentally checked off items on my Schlitterbahn Bingo card:

• Women with leathery skin and stretched out tattoos – check
• Shirtless men with beer guts sitting in tubes scratching themselves – check
• Walking proof that inbreeding is a bad thing – check
• A toddler in the kid pool wearing a regular diaper seven times its normal size – check
• Band aids in the pool – check
• Teenage boys in packs acting like jackasses – check
• Shrieking teen age girls who should be told that wearing a fringed bikini top is never a good idea – check
• Giant fake boobs on display – check
• T-shirts with horribly offensive drawings and slogans on them – check

But we survived, and the kids had a lot of fun. We all got Slushees and giant pretzels and finished the day absolutely waterlogged. I was so grateful that my neighbor and her family were there with us. They helped me keep track of everyone. Because of them, the big girls were able to go off and ride the big, fancy rides while I hung in the little kid pools with Campbell and Elizabeth. Campbell has decided he wants to live at Schlitterbahn. Shudder.

Now my kids can never ever say, “You never take us anywhere!” ever again. On the other hand, I think I’m going to get asked “When can we go back?” every half hour between now and the end of the summer.

No pictures. I deliberately took myself offline for the day and left my phone in the car. It was nice to be disconnected.