25 Screaming Children Take on WaterBoom

On Saturday Nick and I had the pleasure of accompanying 25 kids from Friendship Home to a local water park (along with a few other adults thankfully!).  As I’ve mentioned before, these kind of experiences are rare for them.  I took a poll and most of the kids had only been swimming 2-3 times in their life before.  I’m not kidding, you could feel the anticipation building throughout the entire car ride.  No lie, one little girl vomited almost as soon as we got there.  This was a B-I-G deal for these 11 and 12 year olds…

I had to appreciate the difference in perspectives when seeing things through the eye of a child.  Nick and I agreed that this was perhaps the saddest waterpark we had ever seen.  But looking at those kids wide-eyed and giggling, you would have thought were were at Disney World!  It was such fun to be around infectious joy of that nature.  I dare say they even got to Nick a bit!  :)

We ended up staying at the Waterpark for 4 hours roughly and I kid you not, they were in the water every minute of those 4 hours (except for the 15 minutes when they scarfed down their lunch).  The Wait-to-swim-until-1-hour-after-RULE kept popping into my head, but I quickly pushed it aside.  No way was I standing between these kids and their pool!

The kids managed to convince me to go down the slide with them (something I would NEVER even consider usually).  Let’s just say I was not too excited about this…  After I make it up to the top of the slide and start to push my way over the edge, I feel a kid glob on to my neck.  Guess he thought we were going down together?!  Nick managed to grab a fantastic shot of me grimacing while the kid has me in a choke hold.  PRICELESS!

I must say though, I love this shot the most.  Here is Nick being mobbed by a pack of hyper kiddos.  OMG, are we the whitest people ever?  Remind me not to get swimsuit shots taken again next to dark Filipino children!  It’s blinding…

As always, lots more great shots waiting for you at SMUGMUG!