Nessie's revenge and much more

Happy Birthday Garrett!
To celebrate, we had a birthday party at the West Edmonton Waterpark, the mammoth indoor water world seen below:Normally, entrance into the waterpark is a whopping 27$/person for the day. With our birthday party rate, we each paid a meagre 15.50$ AND Garrett got in for free. However, the waterpark doesn't let you bring in any food for the day, except for a birthday cake. I figured that a cake would have been a little messy, so I made cupcakes and we chowed down on them midday. Other than that and a brief lunch, we played in the wave pool and on the waterslides for 5 hours. It was so much fun! I had forgotten how much fun the waterslides could be - the last time I went was when I was a lot younger. I didn't go on any of the scary rides, but others of our group did. Here are some pictures of Garrett going down the 'Sky Screamer'. The purple slide is the one called 'Nessie's revenge', as mentioned in the title of this entry.We rented tubes as well, and enjoyed riding the waves on them, however I had one scary moment when the wake of the wave caught me and my tube and I went flying. All of a sudden I was on my tube, the next I was flying on top of the wave towards these kids in the water below me. As I flew uncontrollably through the air/wave, I thought for sure I was going to land on top of and take out one of these little kids (well, they were probably 13 or so) when the wave finally brought me down. However, as I was descending, the wave also swept the boys out of the way and I landed in between 3 closely packed people without any incidence of impact. Not bad hey? To top it off, my tube landed on top of my upside down, with me in the middle. Voila!

Several of my friends saw me go flying. Afterwards, Joelle and I were cracking up about it while everyone else was searching for me. Garrett and Joel didn't see where I ended up (which was far away from them and where I had started) so they were looking for me and couldn't hear me yelling to them (it's noisy in there). Perhaps they thought I was drowning somewhere, but nope! I was fine. After that, though, I took a break from the wave pool. Instead, I piled our tubes on top of Joel (Garrett's brother - notice the resemblance?).He's also sitting at the table next to Garrett - perhaps better for comparing their orange hair.Here's a picture of us at our deck chairs just before lunch:After a long day of fun, we disbanded and Garrett and I headed over to Garrett's parents house for dinner and cake. We were pretty tired from the waterpark, but stayed awake to meet up with Graeme and Karolina in the evening for coffee and a board game. It was a long day, but hopefully a good birthday for Garrett!