I’ve been meaning to get this posted for some time now.  Right after school started, we joined our fellow teachers and headed to Shanghai’s water park called Dino Beach.  We had no idea what to expect, but had an idea that it would be over the top.  Afterall, Shanghai does do things over the top….. indoor Ski Hill, indoor Fishing Pond.

Getting into the park was a bit insane as the concept of a line is foreign to many, but we did manage to get in, get our things into lockers, rent an inner tube and have a great time.  We floated down the lazy river a couple of times and Amelia LOVED this part because she kept throwing herself off of the inner tube into the water… she had floaties on so she just floated down the lazy river on her own.  There was a large water area for small kids too which Maddie took Amelia all over… up and down waterfall stairs, down slides.

The highlight was the wave pool.  The wave pool was “on” for 30 minutes and then “off” for the thirty minutes. Andy took Maddie out to the back of the wave pool at one point as she held onto her tube for dear life but she was laughing the entire time.

The afternoon got BUSY.  They had allowed well over 10,000 people into the park and you could tell.  The wave pool was a sea of people but the interesting parts happened when we spotted… underwear.  Apparently, there are a number of people without swimsuits so they dropped trau and swam around in their underwear… which would hang off of their bodies once they got wet!

That was our cue…. exit left!!

Enjoy the video below….

What a full week it has been!  We got back to Shanghai late Thursday night and here it is Thursday night again so we’ve been back a week.  Maddie spent a fair amount of time in the pool which meant we had a lot of time for some interesting conversations.  Maddie has been on so many planes this summer that she has decided that she wants to be an airplane girl.  Later, when I asked her where she wanted to go she said that she wouldn’t ever get off the plane.  She would just stay on the plane forever to help people!  Okay, so maybe the 11 take-off and landings this summer had an impact on her mental health!

Like any good mom, I took Maddie to the doctor on her birthday because she needed a check-up in order to go to school this year.  Now, Maddie had five shots when we were back in the States this year and I promised her no skin pricks with the TB test so we did an x-ray.  That ended up being just as traumatic as a skin prick though but she persevered!  Because school hasn’t started and there are hardly any kids back yet, we had a small celebration for Maddie’s golden birthday. Ron, Ashley and Eva came over for Miss Maddie’s birthday where she set the table all by herself and even decorated her own birthday cake. I told her that she had to act suprised when she saw it and I think she did a pretty good job!:)

We did get Maddie a new puppy for her golden birthday. I think it’s good for us to have a dog in the house. Maddie turned five on the fifth so we got her a golden lab. Maddie decided to name her Shallie Callie because she’s on a rhyming word kick. We call her Callie for short though!

Callie is a cute puppy and enjoys our routine of getting up in the morning and sitting in the backyard.  Watch the video below even though it’s a bit blurry… it’s actually the result of a cold camera going outside into the humidity!