i've found my mecca!

i'm makeupless, dirty, and slightly sunburned-- the way summer is supposed to be. me, ryan, sarah and eli went camping and to holiday world from monday night to this morning, and it made me feel like a kid and a grownup at the same time. we planned (ok sarah planned), paid for and executed the entire trip on our own, brought and cooked food, did all the things that camping is good for-- but im used to going with older people who do all of that and i just show up and eat the food : ). lame, i know. i planned the whole spring break trip ryan and i took in march, but that was much simpler. so it was a nice experience to have a vacation with just my friends, and one that wasn't a bunch of young people goofing off, but two couples camping and amusement park-ing together.
HOWEVER
holiday world has an amusement park and a water park all in one. i havent been to an amusement park in years. so we're riding water slides at the water park, and we see this huge jungle gym thing for kids that has multiple water slides, fountains, spouts of water to aim at eachother all over the place, nets to crawl across, tubes to crawl through, and one of those car sized buckets at the top that fills with water and dumps it all every five minutes or so. SO much fun. i wanted to go play on it, and i saw adults in it with their kids, but everybody i was with said you had to be with your child. i was completely ready to make friends with a kid and ask if i could play on it with them. or just grab one and run to the biggest slide. but they wouldn't let me.
an hour, a water slide and a wave pool later, we head up to see the new attraction, and it's a grown-up sized water jungle gym!!!! when you're on it, there's water falling on you from every direction. little buckets are stationed everywhere that can tip on you at anytime, or can be tipped onto innocent bystanders. tubes and pipes carry water all over the place to cover every inch pf the bridges, stairs, and floors. we played there for at least another hour. it was finally a place where we could play and laugh no matter what age we were, and it was completely expected and okay! everyone turned into a bigger version of me for an hour, and i wasn't the weird energetic or annoying one or the one who laughs really loud and high-pitched and squeaks when she gets happy-- eli was jumping over all the sprinklers/fountains and sarah was riding the water slides and ryan was squirting all the little kids and holding me in front of the spraying water... it was the best time i've had in a LONG time. it even beat having a fake snowball fight with the cast of Almost, Maine in the 80 degree morning at shawnee. i would go back just for that place. it is very near and dear to my heart. we had the best pizza of our lives, rode more rides, then went back to the campsite to be grownups again.

i tried on my friend's wedding dress today. am i allowed to say that? it fit almost perfectly...