This past weekend, we took the family to Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, KS. We had so much fun! It was the most unique water park I’ve ever been to. The slides were great, the kids play area had so many slide choices and of course, you can’t leave out the World’s Tallest Water slide as being one of the coolest features in the park! 3 of my 7 kids braved that thing. I was not among the brave, but I would’ve been if I was still a teenager, I can assure you! I was standing at the bottom and took this picture looking straight up.
Check out that drop!
And when I took this one, I was relaxing in a peaceful cabana while my one year old was napping in the stroller, waiting for 3 of my older kids to get their turn on the slide.
As you can see from the beautiful blue skies in the above pictures, the weather was perfect! We had brought sunscreen with us and decided that we’d put it on every hour, as we knew that the sun was really hot and shining directly on us that day. We had bought SPF 50, so I knew we’d be just fine. But guess what? We weren’t just fine. The kind of lotion I bought did not work on several of us. It worked on the younger kids, but the older ones, not so much. I don’t know if we bought a bad batch, or what…but by the time we got home I was in some serious pain.
Here I am with my husband, not knowing how burned to a crisp I was getting…..
You can see how red I am here:
My 15 year old daughter loves Pinterest and started researching things that would make sunburns better. She decided to start testing if any of them worked and tried several different methods on different parts of her sunburned body.
Here’s a few of the things she tried applying to her sunburn:
- Milk
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Aloe Vera Gel with Lidocaine
- Black tea
Me? I was exhausted and kept going back to the aloe vera gel for the ease of it, but I didn’t get a lot of sleep that first night, as I was still in a lot of pain.
My daughter decided that the milk and apple cider vinegar worked ok, but she found it was similar results as the aloe vera gel, which provides great instant relief but doesn’t really seem to reduce the duration of the sunburn. What she decided worked the best was the Black Tea. Everywhere she applied the black tea, the next day, was much less painful! I kind of thought it was coincidence, so I didn’t jump on the bandwagon right away, but…when my sunburn was still hurting really bad the next day, I decided to give the black tea a try.
I soaked paper towels in tea and draped them across the most painful parts of my sunburn.
I went to sleep and everywhere that the tea had touched didn’t hurt nearly as much. So then, I started reapplying the tea over and over on everything else that was sore, and that quickly eliminated the pain as well. I was so thrilled! Finally, I had relief! I can now sleep comfortably. I’m still red, nearly a week later, but no longer in pain.
We had such a great time at the water park that weekend, I’d do it all over again. I will definitely try different brands of sunscreen and see how well they work, but I have a feeling that I would’ve gotten a sunburn no matter what kind I chose, because this was my first major sun exposure of the season. It’s always worse the first time, you know.
If you haven’t ever had the chance to visit a Schlitterbahn Water Park, I highly recommend visiting one. There’s several locations in Texas and then the one in Kansas City. Each water park has something cool to be famous for. The one we visited had the world’s tallest water slide and the Midwest’s longest tube ride (which was definitely a favorite for me!). What I liked the most of all though, was that everything we did, seemed to be unique. I hadn’t ever been on anything quite like it. I mean, they even let you practice boogie boarding …..
If you’re going to be anywhere near a Schlitterbahn, be sure to visit their site to see if you can schedule a visit.
Giveaway!
If you’d like to have a chance at winning 4 tickets to Schlitterbahn Waterpark (any location!), just enter into the giveaway below!
I received free tickets for my family in exchange for telling you how we liked the park. All opinions are 100% my own.
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