On Mondays I feel pretty good after a rest from the weekend, so I played games and did activities with the kids. One of the things we did was to make experiments from a book. We beat up egg whites to see what happens when air is added to them and then added sugar and baked them. That was a yummy experiment. The next one we did was making volcanos using baking soda, vinegar, water, and soap. The mixture exploded from bottles in towers of foam. They loved that one and wanted to do it over and over again. I didn’t get a good video of some the explosions, but they loved playing with the foam afterwards too.

Vacation to Dauphin Island

John, Ali, Little J., and Kelsey went on a two week vacation to a large beach house that was right on the beach. It was owned by Ali’s boss. It was on Dauphin Island which is near Mobile, Alabama. The house was huge. It has several stories and bedrooms. It even had a roof deck and an elevator in the house. It was very private and they had the beach to themselves. Little J gave me a tour on video cam and I tried to take some pictures during the tour. I only ended up getting a couple good ones.

Huge Tree!!!

Boardwalk to the beach. The swamp walk wood planks was the bird sanctuary on Dauphin Island.

Ali holding a sea creature?

Digging a trench from the ocean to the tide pools. John said it was going to be a river when they were done.

The below pictures were taken at night about midnight. The moon was almost full and looked like daylight outside. Was wild.

Fort Gaines near Pensacola Alabama. They did the tour.

John got braces. I can’t believe how much older he looks with his wild hair and what looks like the beginnings of a mustache. He’s twelve going on thirteen.

They would go out at night with flashlights looking for sea creatures in the water. The saw a Sea Turtle and Eal and crabs.

One night they even saw a whole bunch of stingrays. Ali rescued one that was hurt and in the sand. She picked it up and put it back in the water.

They were out till 3 am walking the ocean.

On their way home they stopped at Hot Springs, Arkansas. They stayed in a historic old house. Looks very nice.

Night time ghost tour. Apparently, Hot Springs has quite an infamous mob history with lots of mayhem going on.

Splash Summit

I had Get Out Utah passes to a Splash Summit water park in Provo so I took the kids.

Kids Area

Sea serpent. They slide out its mouth. You can also see the boat slide behind the sea serpent.

Remi liked going around the poole on her belly. She would also run and dive onto the water on her belly.

Remi’s favorite slide was the butterfly. She went down it several times, always calling me to watch her before she slid.

Link is in the castle getting ready to go down his favorite slide.

Link going down the slide.

2nd Kids Area

This is one of the five concrete kids slides. Locke and link did the four long ones. Remi did a short one.

Remi went down this little concrete slide.

Wave Pool

The boys especially loved the wave pool. I wish I had gotten a video of it because Link was in a tube and making the waves push him. They were big waves. He went a long way each time. Locke liked being in the wave pool without a tube or floaty. That was a little concerning. He has gotten to be a better, more confident swimmer, but he was in an area with the biggest waves. Fortunately, he did okay. Though he did go get a life jacket eventually.

All the waves were pushed to the right so they were biggest there, which is where the kids were, and it was crowded. I got the empty photos of the splash summit site because I wasn’t able to get many pictures. I was worried about getting the phone wet.

Locke did go down one of the big slides too. The green one. The lines were too long so he didn’t try another. He also said it was super slow and he had to push himself but it ended in a pool of deep water. I wish I had had another adult to go with him on slides. I had to stay with the little ones.

Locke also did the swing into the pool, without any life jacket floatys. He did great though.

I don’t think he did this. It looked really hard and only teens were doing it. It was in the same area as the swing.

Link and Remi liked watched people come down these slide. The blue one went straight down and people went on their belly down it.

The Rainforest lazy river. The rainforest was all plastic plants. The river did have 3 waterfalls.

This slide was crazy. We got to see people doing it every time we did the lazy river.

This slide looked fun, with a tube. I’ve tried one like it before but without a tube. I didn’t like it because it sucked me down upside down.

We also got a cheese pizza. The kids love water parks and had a blast. The only problem was that everything cost. Parking was 10 dollars, lockers were 10 dollars, tubes cost 6 dollars a person.