I was sold Upstate New York on an interview in late June of 2002. The Adirondacks were majestic. Rivers were clean. Grass was green. The sun was out… everyday. The possibilities for outdoor fun was endless; a perfect place to raise a family. I took the bait.
November brought two 18-inch snowstorms, followed by a stretch of 25 straight days of some level of snow in January. I know many of you live in horrible wintry places and some love it. Not us. We love summer and with only 2 months of the previous paragraph each year, we MUST take full advantage.
On this particular summer day, I was home from work and… the temperature was about 88, we were poppin’ the water plugs, just for ole’ times sake (sing with me… Summer, summer, summertime. Oh… summertimmmmmme).
We don’t have our own swimming pool, but we do have a swing set, a baby pool, Super Soakers, a hose and sprinkler, Slip’N Slide, and the most important ingredient – kids. We have many kids. Four to be exact. And there’s this thing with kids in the summer. They don’t want to get wet at first, but at some point, that’s all they want. We reached this tipping point (pun intended, you’ll see) after two hours of Super Soaker battles and transforming our back yard into a water park. That’s when the gears of Dadnamics cranked out this idea.
[pullquote align=”normal”]What if I filled up a huge bucket and just dumped it over their heads? Yeah, that’s good. No wait. What if I add the swing set and dump the water over them while they swing? Perfect. [/pullquote]
“Kids, do you want to play Splash Mountain?” I make up games and titles on the fly, so many of my titles have the word “mountain” in it. It works, so I go with it.
“Yes! Yes!” They exclaimed.
I explained the rules as I made them up. They got to the swinging and singing. This gave me time to load the first water cannon, which I placed on the playground fort area. Then I climbed up, gave the countdown, and crashed Poseidon’s wrath on them from above.
