Water slide

Perhaps one of the highlights of the trip was after Michael joined us, he and I took Annabelle and Jillian to the outdoor swimming pool. It has a really nice kiddy pool and a big, fast, tall slide. Michael took turns going down with both girls and Annabelle even went down by herself. Michael would wait at the bottom and pull Annabelle out of the water once she slid down. I can’t believe how brave both of my girls are. Jillian wanted to do it over and over again. She even went under the water a few times and just wanted to do it “one more time” as she would say over and over again. Annabelle went down so many times by herself that it got to the point where the lifeguard knew her by name and knew that she needed to wait until Michael was ready to catcher her at the bottom of the slide. As soon as Annabelle hit the water and went under, Michael would reach for her and pull her out. A lot of times, Annabelle was under the water for quite a long time due to the force of the water pulling her down. Michael would be unable to feel her under the water right away and just start grasping around. Once he felt any part of her, grab it and yank her up. He pulled her up by her arms, legs, neck, even once I think he pulled up by her hair. But through it all, Annabelle loved it and wanted to do it over and over. Michael probably took both girls down the slide over 30 times. He would like flat on his back with the girls lying on top of him the whole way down to reach maximum speed and then at the last second in the last bend of the slide, he’d sit up, use his elbows to slow down, and hold the kids up out of the water as he went under. By the time we were ready to leave, his elbows were extremely sore and throbbing. Even now more than a week later, his elbows still hurt.

 

Here are some videos of the slide. On Annabelle’s video, I accidentally covered the microphone, but she’s standing at the top of the slide and there’s one father and child that go down before she does. In the one with Jillian, she and Michael are standing at the very top of the slide at the beginning of the video.

One of the most unique things about Sheridan is that they have a wild animal reserve right in the middle of town. This reserve is home to lots of bison and elk. The swimming pool happens to run along part of the reserve and as we were leaving, we saw 3 huge bison come right up to the fence where we were standing. They were so close we could have reached out and touched them. You don’t realize how big and scary these animals are until you’re standing right next to one. It was pretty cool.