Family Vacation -- Part One

Because I start school in less than two weeks, we decided to take a quick family vacation for the first time since we went to Garmisch Germany! We did go home (Washington) between Germany and here, but I'm talking about a vacation for no good reason! ;-) We thought about going to Mt. Rushmore, but decided on something a little closer. Kansas City, MO has a theme park and water park called Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun that we thought would be perfect for our trip and its only a three hour drive! Roby was planning on taking a week of leave as his dad is coming for a visit on Thursday. To go on this trip, and to give him more of a break from work, he added another week off! (Not to mention I'm sure he wanted to spend some quality time with ME before I started school! haha) We (I) looked at theweatherchannel.com several times a day trying to figure out which two days would be best to go. I finally decided that even if there was a 30% chance of rain/thunder storms one day, we'd go to the water park that day and it wouldn't matter because we'd be getting wet that day anyway! The day before we left, the weather changed to 0% chance of rain both days and 95 degrees on the day we planned on going to the water park!

Sunday morning we left bright and early...technically it wasn't bright yet...to Kansas City. (We also got to drive my friends car as she was out of town! Score for us!) As you probably know, Natalie is NOT a morning person, but when I woke her up she jumped up and got dressed faster than I had ever seen her get dressed before!

Playing with some Barbies as we left town.

Ethan kept busy reading most of the way down.

Roby isn't used to waking up in the morning...this is usually the time he goes to sleep.

Cheese!

Not long later, she was passed out. Had to finish getting her beauty rest!

We got to the park at 9 am, waited a bit to get in the parking area, got our tickets and got into the park at 10 am. To warm the kids up, we went on a little ride that just went up and down, round and round.

Doesn't Roby look thrilled?!?!

The best part of this ride was when a cicada hit Roby then landed on Ethan's neck. Roby said he freaked out, made all kinds of faces and flailed trying to get it off! I wish I would have seen it!!!

Cheese again!

So happy!

Such joy!

Next Roby, Ethan, and Natalie went on the Octopus. I'm not a fan as the last time I went on this ride was at the fair in Walla Walla...and I lost my lunch after.

She was excited!

During the ride I could hear very clearly that she was NO longer excited!

Ethan loved it!

She did not want to go on that ride again! Roby was cracking up at her reaction throughout the ride!

We decided it was time for Roby and the kids' first roller coaster ride!

Heading up the stairs to the Prowler!

In line. Neither of the kids were sure if they wanted to go on it. Both kept wanting to back out of line. We told them it would be scary but fun and that they had to try it once!

The whole ride Nat was screaming and making scared noises. Roby said Ethan was doing something similar, but in 10 year old boy fashion. When it was coming to a stop, Natalie panted one last time and goes,

"That...was...AWESOME!!!"

Ethan liked it too!

As you go down the big "drop" they take a picture of you. When we went to see the picture, Roby and I almost died laughing! We had to purchase it! I have to find the cords to my scanner to post it, and will post it at the end of the vacation pictures. But I have to say that it is the GREATEST picture EVER!!!

I did think that because the kids liked the ride right after we went on it that we should go on it again...but we didn't. We did other things for awhile and tried to get them on other roller coasters. They didn't want anything to do with the other roller coasters and by the time we got back to the Prowler they didn't want to go back on it. At least Roby and the kids can say they've been on one!

More pictures to come!