The Niagra

I love these photos.  Love them.  I wasn't planning on photographing Sam that day, and I certainly wasn't prepared to capture these since I never in a million years would've thought he'd go on something like this.   Some are blurry or too warm or too cool, all of them too tedious an edit to be done very well, but I'm so glad I have them.  They crack me up each time I look at them.

This was one hundred percent his idea.  The three of us had popped over to the soccer field next to our house where our neighborhood had set up a little pre-Fourth of July celebration.  There were sno cones and bounce houses and these blow-up water slides.  It was hotter than you-know-what so we planned on having a quick sno cone in the shade and trying a bounce house for a second before heading home.  As we were walking back to the house we passed this slide.  It was the biggest by far (and called "The Niagra") and go figure - he begged to go on it.  I couldn't believe he wanted to try it; he's never been one to go for things like this.  We had just been at Jack Carter Pool the week before and he was terrified of trying the baby slide that wasn't even as tall me.  Where all this courage came from, I don't know.

As we headed home to put on his suit and sunscreen I thought for sure he was going to change his mind.  But he didn't!  He hopped right in line and slid down over and over and over again.  He looked so little in line with all the big kids and the ladder to the top of the slide just dwarfed him.  Every time he'd get to the top he would disappear around the corner and I never knew when his little body was going to come flying down the shoot!  I had to stand pretty far back and only had my wide-angle; I can't believe I caught the expressions I did!  He looked absolutely terrified going down, but once he reached the bottom, he was grinning every time.  It's so wrong of me to laugh at these pictures of him scared out of his mind - but I do!