Where there's a will....

We had the opportunity to escape last weekend to a great hotel in the south of our country.  It was an extra special treat because of the grass (very rare here) and the beautiful landscaping (another rare thing) surrounding the kiddy pool and playground area.  There were plenty of wide open spaces for the kids to run around, a kiddy pool with a fountain in the middle (not turned on in the picture), a basketball court,

a big pool complete with lap lanes, high and low dives and a water slide..

The high dive reminded me of our summers growing up at the YMCA pool back when high dives weren't such a huge insurance risk.  Our girls were thrilled and fearless.

Maddie even learned to dive off of the high dive.  Unfortunately the day I had my camera at the pool her legs were sore (from smacking so many times probably), so she was done diving off the high dive, but I got a picture of her low diving board dive.

It was great fun for all of us in beautiful surroundings.

So why is this post titled, "Where there's a will..."??  Well, I mentioned the waterslide...  The kids were all thrilled when they saw it.  Unfortunately for them, the hotel was on generator our first afternoon/evening there.  For those of you unfamiliar with overseas life, that means that the regular supplies electricity was cut and everything was running off generator and when that is the case, only certain electrical things can be run without blowing a circuit.  Well apparently the pump for the waterslide that made it "slideable" by making water gush down it from the top, used to much electricity to be run while on generator, so the waterslide was not used that first afternoon.

Notice I didn't say that the waterslide was closed.  Yes, the door to climb up the steps to enter the waterslide the normal way was closed.  However, like I said, when there's a will, there's a way.  You see, safety precautions, and well, rules in general, are somewhat optional around here.  The kids soon had there own plan figured out that kept them entertained for hours, and with plenty of adults around to supervise, we thought, "why not?".  Here's how it worked....

Step one:  climb onto the bottom of the slide

Step 2:  Fill a water bottle (they actually had two or three with pool water)

Step 3:  Make your way up the slide while pouring water from the bottle back down the slide to get it wet

(just a note here that Naomi was required to crawl the last little bit of the climb up)

Step 4:  Enjoy the ride down!

there was a bit of a log jam at the bottom, as they never really got going that fast, but they still loved it!

All in all the waterslide was only officially "open" for about 30 minutes of our entire weekend, but thanks to the kids ingenuity (and the lack of rules), they enjoyed it for a lot longer and we never heard a complaint about it not working!