Sunday, September 14, 2008

the most fun you can have in the desert

this weekend we went to the kalahari resort courtesy of camp quality. they are awesome.

we had a great time, even kisu who had to be persuaded to join his loving family and tivo the football games. this was a great weekend to spend at an indoor waterpark, considering the downpour we got (and even a tornado touchdown not too far away).

the place was insanely huge. despite our net surfing, we were completely unprepared for the scale of this destination. i guess we never really registered the 'resort' component in the title. we were caught a little unprepared in a few ways. one, although i borrowed an underwater camera from noel, i forgot my dry camera; there were a lot of photo ops i missed, like a live tiger cub! also, no adult thought to check on pooka's packing skills and she spent the entire weekend wearing her bathing suit since it was the only butt-covering item of clothing that was acceptable to be publicly visible. (although there were 3 stores in the resort, none of them had girls' shorts.)

but i did bring the wet camera, as i mentioned, so let's see some of those shots:




as you can see, pooka has made significant progress on coping with her fear of going underwater.

kisu and i were excited about the fitness room and both planned to use it, but by the time we were done in the water saturday, all 4 of us could barely walk (and we needed to, our room was about half a mile away from the hub of the resort). we were all asleep by 10 that night.

instead of working out, we pigged out. the adults got our money's worth at the breakfast buffet, and i even managed to make up for pooka, who ate only a bowl of cereal. dinner saturday night was a celebratory atmosphere, so we polished off this monster (the desert, not the baby, although they are roughly the same size): click for the full picture.

even bug partook of this, mostly eating the bananas, although she did get a little ice cream and whipped cream. i fear that i did the greatest damage, however. (playing in the water must have countered all the indulgences, thankfully, because the scale was nice to me upon our return home.)

this was the kind of family getaway that we could all feel good about. there was a variety of activities to engage in that covered all ages. kisu got to watch the michigan game, poorly as that ended, while bug napped and pooka and i rode the bigger slides and a water coaster. it certainly worked nicely into my thrive resolution.

we even managed to extend the joy by bringing home some decadent goodies from the candy hut. kisu got a caramel toffee apple; not just your average caramel apple, this had several layers: caramel, toffee chips, and rich chocolate. between 3 of us, we only managed to eat half (oh, we did save the other half for another time). pooka selected oreo bark (white chocolate with cookie bits mixed in) and i got a chocolate covered nutter butter, a pineapple truffle that is so rich it will take me a week to consume it, and an apple pie caramel. that one was delicious, but by the time i was done, my jaw felt like it was going to fall off. it was approximately a 1.5 x 2 x 2.5" solid chunk of caramel. yikes!

it was on this lovely family excursion that the following things occurred: pooka described bug's hair as 'reese's hair'; the lighter parts are the peanut butter and the darker parts the chocolate. (we're not really candy-obsessed in this family, honest.) and bug finally mastered pooka's name. granted it's not her whole name, instead it's the oft-used 'ray-ray', but it is intentionally that, and not just a garbled attempt at her full name. and it is oh-so adorable. now, if we could just get her to stop smacking pooka, they might be friends.