Monday, June 13, 2011

Our Annual Trip to an Amusement Park

Yesterday, was a Big Day for our family.  It was King's Island Day.

I work one day a week, and my company provides free tickets to KI on a Sunday in the summer. 

We've been going for several years and always pray for decent weather. So far, we've never had a totally disastrous weather day.  This year, the weather was perfect -- sunny and highs in the mid 70's.


  Here we are, suited up with hats and sunglasses and sunscreen and strollers.  We're ready to GO!  Kevin's mother kindly came along to help and took the picture.


  Lovely fountains


  That's a 1/3rd scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in the distance.  It is 300 feet high and quite high enough for me!  We split up quite often (more on that later) and the Eiffel Tower was a convenient meeting point throughout the day.


  Sarah had a great day.  She didn't ride any rides and spent much of her time in the stroller, but she had an exciting time looking at all the people and being pushed around.  King's Island has a "baby and child" area and I was able to go and nurse her in comfort and privacy a couple of times.  It worked out very well.


   As I mentioned earlier, this year we split up often.  Our older 4 children are tall enough to ride many of the "big rides" and Miriam and Angela are still relegated to the younger rides.  It turned out that Joseph was more comfortable and still thoroughly enjoyed the smaller rides, so part of the time he stayed with Miriam and Angela, and a couple of times he rode big rides.  Kevin took the big 3 off to ride roller coasters a few times.  It worked out fairly well, though the 3 adults kept busy as one of us had to stay with the baby all the time, and that sometimes left an adult with 3 kids to watch.  When those 3 kids were ages 6, 5, and 3, attentiveness was required!

   Looking at our pictures, I see we have relatively few of the bigger children. I regret not getting a picture of the "big boat" ride.  I took the older 3 children on a giant boat that swings back and forth.  Riders start in a normal seated positiion, and at the extreme position their bodies are perpendicular to the starting position.  It is hard to describe.  Suffice it to say that Naomi and Isaac LOVED it,  Lydia sort of liked it, and I ... well, I was nervous.  There was a lurching feeling at the end of each swing when I got a very peculiar feeling in my tummy.  I'm also not fond of heights.  Ok, true confessions, I kept my eyes shut through the entire thing :-).  This particular ride had very short lines, so after Isaac announced that it was the best ride in the entire park, we went on it again!  Where is my medal?  I am truly a heroic Mom sometimes.


  
  My company pays for lunch and for the presence of a "Charlie Brown" character.  (The Kids Area at KI has a Snoopy theme.)  The baby thought 'Linus' was interesting and fun.  The other small children were nervous and wouldn't go near him.  I think people dressed in costumes like that are a bit nervewracking for the average small child.  They are very tall, plush, and don't talk. That's weird.

 
  They have a lovely caraousal and we went on it many times.  Short lines, lots of fun.  What more could you ask?

  
  This is one of those dinosaurs that moves and roars at you; KI just added a big Dinosaur Park but it costs extra so we didn't go.  But we enjoyed the one dinosaur at the entrance that is supposed to entice you to go to the Dinosaur Park.

  We had a great day but by 7:15 p.m., more than one of us was close to melting down so we headed home.  It was a very successful day.

 

2 comments:

Sarah said...

It's been a long time since we've gone to KI, the children have never been, but they've asked. I miss the old KI with Hanna Barbera that was when the children's area rocked LOL One of the dinos caught fire there a couple weeks ago. I'd really like to go and yesterday would have been a perfect day. We used to have a pass when I was still at home and we'd go often and I'd almost always get sick :( from the heat. I'm glad you enjoyed your time and hopefully soon we'll be able to take our children.

Lana said...

What a fun day!