Kalahari in the Dells

We went to Wisconsin Dells with the Abholds on Thursday afternoon. My parents obtained a free night stay since they were treated badly at the Kalahari. They gave us the free night stay, so we traded it in for $129 off of a suite. Not a bad deal.

If you’re not familiar with the Kalahari, it is a huge hotel and conference center with a large indoor and outdoor water park attached. We’ve taken Ethan to this water park in the past when my parents were staying there, but this is the first time we’ve stayed there ourselves. The first thing we did when we got there, then, was to put our swimsuits on and head over to the water park. Ethan’s first order of business was to run around like a crazy person in the wave pool. This kept him occupied for a half an hour or so, but soon he decided we had to explore the other regions of the water park. After a minimal amount of searching, we found the kid’s area with an immense rain structure surrounded by fiberglass animals and water slides. Now this was fun. Ethan started out going down the smaller slides and playing around the fiberglass animals. After awhile he discovered a slightly bigger slide that he was happy to go down for quite awhile. All the while Ethan was vaguely aware of some bigger slides on the other side of the structure.

After about 15 minutes going down the smaller slides, Ethan walked over and discovered the “lizard” slide. He checked it out on several occasions. He would walk over, look at the slide, check out some of the people getting off, then leave and go down the smaller slide again. He did this about 4 times before he came over and found me and asked me to help him find the lizard slide. Half way up to get to the lizard slide he changed his mind and decided to go on the smaller slide again. After another 5 minutes, he did the whole thing over again from the start. This time we made it all the way to the top of the slide. He got in line, sat down on the slide, then decided he didn’t want to do it again, so he got off. After a couple of words of encouragement, he sat down at the head of the slide again, and this time he went down. Jenny was waiting at the bottom for him. I don’t know what he looked like getting off the slide, but when I met him at the top again he was smiling from ear to ear. He told me “I didn’t cry at all!”

Tomorrow we’re going to try to get him to go down the bigger slides that Jenny and I can go down.