Letters from the Evans: Vacation 5: Schlitterbahn Day 1 (Post-Nap)

These pooped out little dudes needed a siesta for sure!

It took a little extra ~~begging~~ persuasion to have the housekeeping crew let us in early, but thankfully they eventually did! While Papa and I worked that out, Clara, Emma, Lulu & Daddy told stories and sang songs on the front porch:

Emma just wanted "Knuckles" (something the hotel manager in San Antonio taught the girls), and walked around the entire house with her fist up wanting more knuckles. Papa and I even heard her say the word!!!

Hilarious.

Once we got in and explored the house (and gave lots of knuckles), the girls went to sleep. Emma woke up from her nap earlier, but when we tried to wake Clara up so she wouldn't sleep too long she said she didn't want to play anymore and went back to sleep on Papa.

So I took Emma by myself to Surfenburg to play! There are only snack and water break pictures from a regular because she's a tough little cookie to play with in the water, let alone attempt to add photos with a nice camera to the equation, but I have a couple of water camera pictures!!

First we chatted with some ducks:

and then we went down this clam slide (you'll see it in a few moments) over and over and over again. We probably went down it at least 30 times. It was extremely challenging to make sure she was safe on the top of the slide AND making sure I was at the bottom in time to catch her, but hey! I burned some serious calories. And there was a sweet little girl named Gia who likes art and is 9 years old (she was rather chatty), who helped remind Emma to "sit on your bottom and wait for you mommy" (she echoed me perfectly :)

Then we took a snack break:

And guess who showed up!? Clara decided she DID want to play after all, so Daddy brought her over to the park where we were at.

She was quite happy to jump right in and get wet again:

Happy water girl

Her favorite this trip was actually the submarine slide, but since it's enclosed I only have pictures of her landing at the bottom:

so here are some from her second favorite slides: the octopus! (or optabus in Clara lingo):

At the top ready to go down

Clara did SO well this year making sure that no one was at the bottom before going down. In fact, while she was waiting for another child like I asked her to, a big kid didn't just push her down the slide before she was ready, he kicked her! OH no, little dude. My inner mama bear erupted and took care of the situation. He was plenty old enough to know better.

Wanna see how well my attempts at the octopus slide went on the water camera?

Hehehe, it's really a good thing I took a few with the phone camera! Ha!

By this time Lulu and Papa joined us and we went on the lazy river and even rode an alligator!!!

Daddy, Clara, Lulu & Emma

Caught an alligator! whoa!

goes "snap snap!"

Mommy got on with Clara

Two little ones in tubes

Lulu and Clara going under a bridge

Emma enjoyed floating with her Daddy

Lulu and Clara, Daddy and Emma

After all that fun Emma was getting pretty pooped out, so she and Papa had a deep conversation while Clara kept playing.

Lulu is a smart cookie and knew we'd all be hungry since it was way past dinner time, so she treated us to dinner. Emma made a big mess like usual:

ohhhhhh Emma

Clara wasn't hungry but she ate all of her chicken and most of her fries. Hmmm. :)

Then, since the rest of us were still eating but Clara wanted more play time, she and Papa went back into the water.

Clara telling Papa "no get me!"

Emma decided it wasn't cool that Clara got more playtime and she didn't, so Lulu and I took her to talk to the ducks again (although I think I got the pirate ship and the ducks and the shipwreck out of order on here):

"Quack"

Then we did some pirate ship exploring:

Then we played on a shipwreck slide (maybe a result of the pirate ship!? who knows!?)

I feel like I should take a moment to point out that Emma provided some pretty serious entertainment to everyone around us. Because she's so itty bitty people were shocked we were "letting" her go down slides (as if we could have stopped her!), and that she was having a BALL! Everytime she'd land at the bottom, she would get up and clap for herself saying "yay!!!!" and look around for other people to cheer her on too. How could anyone resist!?!? In fact, on day two we ran into a couple of people that remembered us from this day and had to say hello again and hoped they'd get to watch Emma go down some slides some more, haha.

Then I wanted to show Lulu and Daddy how much Emma liked the clam slide, but by this time she was too tired to enjoy it like she did earlier, but you can at least see what she did here:

Then we told Clara she could slide 2 more times, and I'm proud of her for listening so well. She may have been super duper moody this trip, but she did listen very well when out and about and near the water.