The Trip, Part One

We are on vacation. Well, it's not technically a vacation- we're on band trip. But what other job would allow you to take a vacation with 30 babysitters at your beck and call?

Today we went to a water park. I was concerned about how the kids would act. Would they like it? Both of them get upset if they get a little water in their eyes when they take a bath. I thought streams of water splashing in their eyes would send us back to the hotel room. I was right and wrong.

Ivy loved it. She went right to the water slides. She played in all the little kid watery things that spray and dump water on you. She jumped into a pool with her life jacket on and started swimming. She even got water in her eyes.

Story, on the other hand, was ready to go back to the room after ten minutes. We went to this little area that had small water fountains which you could put your feet on and spray others. She wouldn't put her feet in. We went to the little kid slides and my husband and I pushed her down a couple. She cried the whole time. A bucket dumped water on us; she screamed. I took her to the lazy river and she whimpered when we'd get close to the little statues that sprayed water. In the wave pool, she got so scared she ran away from the water, fell down, and scraped her knee. There was only one thing she wanted to do and luck would have it, she wasn't big enough. However, a very nice lifeguard let us get in with her and help her across these plastic lily pads.

In the room later, both kids went crazy. Somehow they had a jump rope and they were trying to throw it over the half wall and hoist each other up which, while comical, was probably breaking a hundred different parenting rules. They also decided not to eat the pizza we had but to whine for chocolate donuts. So now we have pizza for breakfast instead of donuts.

There's a balcony attached to our room and they are obsessed with it. I have heart failure everytime they go out there and touch the railing. If there were two kids who could figure out how to get through the bars, it would be them.

We could see the fireworks from the theme park off the balcony, and when I heard them, I yelled to the kids to run to the window and look. Ivy, a former fireworks addict, watched like three of them and then went back to the TV. I asked her why she wasn't watching the display and she responded, "Mommy, I am much too busy with my TV."

Hopefully tomorrow won't kill me,