Over the Top

Wow, this past week has zoomed by! We definitely topped last week's activity level and went over the top! The first part of the week, Mimi and Poppa came to visit. I hate that I was brain-dead & didn't get any pic's of their visit! We even went to the jump place with the girls and I forgot my camera again!! But, it was nice to move at a fun but not break neck speed those couple of days. We then had a few families over for an early celebration and time together grilling out and letting the kids play here. Then, we made the decision to tackle a theme park for the first time since we had kids. Natalie is definitely old enough to ride most rides but Nicole was even able to ride quite a few!

The first thing that Woody did was ride the newest, fastest rollercoaster on the park. I watched the girls and went on a few rides like the carousel that we could all three go on. Natalie went on one ride by herself. Then, Woody came back and encouraged me to ride the rollercoaster. He said it would fill my rollercoaster void for the rest of the day. Did it ever! I definitely had never been as high, fast, or long on a coaster. I didn't need any more of that and was happy to stay in Snoopy land the rest of the day.

The first surprise was that the girls liked the characters, even Nicole who had disliked the Clifford and other walking characters, including Santa.

The second surprise was the huge markup in drinks and other foods. You cannot bring any outside food or drink into the park, so you must buy there. The only thing you can get is a little dixie cup of ice water for free, so we got several of those to keep us hydrated.

The third surprise was that after a few rides, Natalie said she was through with the rides and wanted to go swimming. So, we went to the swim area. It was way beyond my thoughts and was really the highlight of the trip. Definitely made it worthwhile. We started at the wave pool. Everybody liked that, including Nicole. It was well done and great!

There were some kiddy areas too with playground like structures, spraying structures, and slides or rides. Anything you could think of... we moved from the "beach" to the mountain stream innertubing ride. That was our only catastrophe of the trip, as we vouched for a zip bag instead of paying for $10 locker...the cellphone was toast as the bag leaked a little.

After spending a few hours there, we wanted to find ice cream. It took several times to find ice cream as there were some water problems in the entrance area and several stores were closed. Including Chic-fil-A, so we didn't get lunch there. But, we did get lunch in Snoopy land, where the kids got a cute lunchbox souvenir for their kids meal. But, Nicole took a nap before we found the ice cream...

so Natalie ate all the ice cream by herself!

We then got dressed out of the swimsuits and went back to ride some rides. The kid rollercoaster was much more tame, and I rode it with Natalie (Woody had earlier). We then went on every kind of spinning vehicle ride you could think of for kids, and also the train and elevated helicopters. It was great, and we were ready to leave for a late dinner off the park!

The next day we didn't rest but went straight to Grandma & Grandpa's to spend time in their pool and eat lunch with them. Nicole liked jumping into Grandpa's or Daddy's arms! Natalie was doing great swimming by herself without a jacket. Swim lessons should go much better this year!