The summer of dirt

We put sand in the sandbox tonight...all that is left to do is to create/attach the sandbox cover, and then I'll post pictures of the completed play yard.

Twenty minutes of sandbox and I can already tell that Olivia is going to have to be closely supervised whenever the sandbox is open. And I'm going to need pictures to prove to the world that there once was a separation between sand and gravel. I don't think it will be that way for long.

I don't think I ever realized just how dirty sand is. I have already been surprised by the dust that emanates from the rock as Olivia shovels it into her little buckets. But sand...it sticks. It was in her toes and fingernails and hair...she might have even stuffed a handful in her mouth when I wasn't looking. All I know is that she went straight into the bathtub as soon as we were finished.

I think the bathtub is going to see more than it's fair share of Olivia this summer.

We spent a couple of hours at the waterpark this afternoon. This waterpark...well, it's insanely huge. There is a kiddie pool and a spray park and two wave pools and two jungle gym-style spray/bucket/climbing/slide thingies that are fun for the whole family (unless you happen to be under 3 feet tall...then you can't ride any of the slides and you just get run over by everyone). There are about a million big-people slides and two of those lazy river thingies. Water everywhere.

Olivia loves it, but I think we will limit our future visits to the kiddie pool and the spray park. Those are the places where she's likely to have the most fun without getting bowled over by an overzealous 10-year-old who's not watching where he's going.

Even so, she got blindsided at the kiddie pool today. This area consists of an upper pool and a lower pool with two extremely slow and kid-friendly slides that connect the two. One is just a big ramp with water sliding down it. It's probably about 12 feet wide, so lots of kids can go down at once. I let Olivia get on by herself at the top, and I go to the bottom to catch her. She was having a blast until a 12-year-old girl got a little too crazy and took her out toward the bottom of the slide. She just came up behind her going too fast and slid right into her. Olivia went flying into the pool and was under for what seemed like an eternity (2 seconds). I scooped her up and she was fine, but MAD. She cried and bemoaned the injustice. And then she decided to go again.

Kids.

I'm quite pleased that it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. A perfect excuse to stay inside...and clean. It's good that we have all these opportunities for outdoor fun for the summer, but there is only so much dirt and sweat and chlorine I can take in one week.