Overcoming at Kalahari

We went to Kalahari intending to peek at the 3rd annual Unschooling conference. Well, that never really happened. I think it would have been better had I been there on the day the conference started. I would have liked to hear John Gatto talk. Even the movie, "UP", they had set up in a conference room, we went but did not stay (too crowded). Instead , we went back and were snug in our own room watching "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" and etc.
J/Prime in the conference area.

But this trip held a special life lesson for J. Let me share it here. J was scared of and refused to go on the "Cheetah race" but after some talking and a night's rest, she was ready to give it a try. The day of the ride, she says she's mostly excited but still had butterflies. I think she was most unsure when it was getting really close to her turn. But after coming down, she excitedly said, "This is fun!"

This is the "Cheetah race" after J tried it out. We are going on it again!

The second one, "Rippling Rhino", it was even more dramatic. J was fine until the tube was pulled up in front of her and as we all were getting in, she started to cry. Not just a little, but really hard and said she doesn't want to go on it. I was quite surprised, so only daddy and Prime went while I walked down with J. After that, we decided to take a snack break. While eating and relaxing a bit, daddy shared some of his own experiences with fear of rides and some of his experiences.

(by Daddy) I told J that fear is not trusting mommy and daddy but most importantly Jesus. We would never hurt you but we will be there with you. As a off topic, J asked me about my experiences with ghosts that I've told her about in the past. I told her it's real but there are many kinds of ghosts. They are all spirits just like the spirit of fear, anger, sadness, and etc. Prime asked me if there were any good spirits. I told him yes, spirit of joy, peace, love, and etc. I told J that if you scared yourself to death, you are opening yourself to attack by spirits. If your fear is out of control, the spirit of fear would come to you and control you. It robs you of many joys. In the Bible, there was a boy that had a legion of evil spirits and they controlled him. You don't want to like that boy right? I told J that she needs to think about the good things and trust mommy, daddy, and Jesus and everything will be fine. I asked her what she was afraid of anyways. She said it was very fast. I asked her "how do you know it's real fast if you've never been on it? You haven't seen it either. I tell you it's very slow and kind of boring. " I dramatized how slow it was to her. Prime agreed. Even Prime was encouraging J, letting her know it was a fun ride. After lunch she thought about it and by the time we finished eating, she told us she wants to try it. When we got up to the ride, I joked about it so that she would kept her eyes/mind off the dark hole of the slide tube. I tried to talk and laugh while we were going down to distract J from her fears. When we got down to the bottom, she liked it. The next time, I let her pick a song she'd like to sing on the way down. I hope she can use this as an experience that she can use to overcome many of her fears in the future.

The kids also loved the wave pool. Prime and J was really brave in there, going against the wave and being splashed again and again by the raging wave.

Now my favorite part was being in the hot tub outside in all the cold/snow. :) It was a nice contrast and something different.