A Swim in a Waterpark, well...sorta

A few weekends ago, our friends John and Kelly invited us to go swimming at The Pointe Tapatio Resort where they were staying.

Bird's eye view of: The Pointe at Tapatio

The place has like 5 pools, one of which is referred to as The Falls. Just to walk into The Falls they ask you for your name and room number, plus you have to wear a wristband.

The pool was nice, I must say. Abundant with, you guessed it, waterfalls...as well as a water volleyball area and a separate beach-like entrance on one side (which provides a shallow area), making it more enjoyable with small children. However, the most impressive and popular thing about this pool is the fabulous waterslide!

Waterslides

They also have a lazy river, which was a little too boring for my broad, but I still think it's worth mentioning! Lazy River
After zipping down the totally enclosed waterslide, it dumps you into a small, moderately deep wading pool that is for the exiters of the waterslide only ( just like all the waterparks have). Both Christopher and Marley went down twice and Javier went once. I totally got gypped on the waterslide, but that's okay because I got to swim and have fun with Jaxon!

Anyways, Jaxon and I waited in the nearby pool which had a perfect view of the waterslide exit. Javier had to be "ball-ready" (hands-free) to help Marley/Christopher get out of the wading pool safely, so neither of us got a picture of our kids coming out of the slide...bummer! So, you all will have to settle for pictures of them after we were done swimming:

Christopher: happy to be swimming!

Christopher & Marley: not too thrilled to leave, but happy nonetheless.

Jaxon: fish outta water!

Thank you, Kelly & John!!!

Christopher the Creative Cat

I can remember summer vacation as both fun and exciting. I can also remember wanting school to start about 2-4 weeks earlier than it was supposed to.

During these hot (and somewhat boring) days, while a couple of my other kids are sleeping, I engage Christopher in play of his choice. Being the constructional engineer that he is and having such a great imagination, he usually wants to "build" something. This day he picked buidling a castle with his Leggos.

I let him build most of the castle (what fun would it be for him to watch Mom build the whole thing anyway?), but I added a few details so I could interact with him. I just love Christopher's imagination and it helps him self-entertain when needed. He inspires my imagination and that's one of many reasons I love him so much.

We named it Christopher's Chateau! Pretty catchy I think and so...I took a few pics.

Here is the castle with a roof on top...

He immediately decided that the roof carried too much weight and the entire castle would come crumbling down. So, he removed the roof to save his masterpiece, phew...good thinking on his part!

Close up view of the drawbridge that actually slides up and off rather than down and out.

What a nifty little idea, I think. :)

View of the drawbridge sliding up and off...

Final view with the drawbridge successfully removed, revealing the spacey interiors. This thing has a room up at the top, as you can see from this photo. However, what is impossible to capture with a camera (unless, I were to disassemble the castle and take photos as I progressed) is that Christopher's Chateau has a secret compartment "downstairs" with two trap doors. It's actually quite impressive, if I do say so myself :)