It was sunny and hot so I took the boys down to Wild Waves water park, near Tacoma. It was an impulsive decision which worked out well because I didn't have time to bring a whole box of car-side refreshments for everyone or make sure we had 3 tubes of sunscreen and backup clothing. We just went and had fun.
They have a rule at Wild Waves that you can't bring your own food. On site, they sell junk food for inflated prices. The only vegetarian items on the menu are cheese pizza ($7) and fries ($5). Even the burrito bar is exclusively meat - chicken, beef or chicken AND beef are your options. So, despite the rule and my impulsivity, I threw in a lunchbox of marinated raw vegetables, quinoa and fruit for me and some snack bars for the kids. The security bag check asked us whether we had food and Alex said "no" with the most guilty look (he had lollipops and hemp bars) and I confessed to having a bottle of water (which explained the lump in the towels when he prodded them). I told the kids they could buy pizza later.
Alex said to Frost "but you can't eat pizza, you're a vegan!" and Frost explained that he was a vegan for everything except cheese pizza.
This is kind of funny because Frost is very fussy about pizza cheese - it has to be absolutely thin and attached. It should be bubbly and yellowish, not pure white, and it should never-never-never form a glop over the surface of the pizza and fall off as a fat-pancake or droop in greasy white ropes when you bite.
Of course, the $7 mini-pizza was all the bad things.
Frost scraped the cheese off and it lay in a gluey ball in the center of his paper plate while he ate the pizza crust with the tomato topping and said how good it was.
Wren was thrilled that he did not have to have meals today. At dinner, he chortled in delight and said to Josh that this was a lucky day because he did not have to eat dinner. Instead, he had various snacks and a large red lollipop from Alexander. All was well.
All was also well at the wave pool. I was worried that Wren would be, well, worried. But he wasn't. He loved the wave pool. He loved how shallow it was at the edges, the regularity of the waves, the easy taper of the shoreline into the deeper realm of splashing boys. At first we were too late to get a pool chair and had to lay our towels on the concrete bank so Wren was also thrilled by the chairs when we did get one and amused onlookers with his announcement that "this is the Best Day in the World and I am Cozy!"
Wren being cozy on the deck chair.
On the way home, while Wren took a break from saying "GUYS, GUYS!! Do you see XYZ" by napping, Frost and Alex read to each other from a book I bought them at Barnes and Noble yesterday. This book is utterly inappropriate for kids their age (containing many challenges which are only funny if you get their X-rated innuendo) and has led to questions like "Mom, what is phone-sex?" Still, the utter hilarity and seriousness with which they have addressed the others makes it all worthwhile.
The book is called Zobmondo!! Would you rather....? The outrageous book of bizarre choices. It includes things like:
Would you rather accidentally run over and kill your best friend's cat with your car
OR
be forced to eat a small poodle you have never met.
Ok, that was a bad one. Most are more innocuous and gross, like:
Would you rather have a small butt on your forehead
OR
two little feet dangling beneath your chin?
Frost and Alex could not stop laughing. Neither could they agree - sometimes having hysterical arguments about which would be worse, why, and how one could escape the situation (by cooking the earthworms? saving the cat? wearing a scarf on your head-butt?)
It was a good day.
