One Last Summertime Hoorah!

My station is having a "Family Lagoon Day" today (Saturday), but for those of us that work on Saturdays, they gave us vouchers to go another day. We decided that yesterday would be a good day since school starts next week...apparently, so did the rest of Utah! It was so crowded! In fact, I don't know if I've ever seen Lagoon that busy before. But, we still got to ride most the rides we wanted to go on, and it was free...so we really can't complain.

This was Cohen's first year that he was really able to go on some rides. I thought he would love it! In fact, when I put him on his first ride of the day & saw a big grin on his face, I was POSITIVE he was going to love it...


Boy was I wrong! As soon as that first ride began to move, he started screaming bloody murder! Well, it was his first ride of the day & he was in a seat all by himself. Maybe he'd do better, I thought, if he rode a few rides with Mike or I or one of his brothers sitting next to him. Nope, I was wrong again. Can you see him freaking out next to Mike?


And, here he is crying again on the next ride...

I didn't know what to do! I've never had a child like this before! My kiddos are little dare devils & love any sort of ride they can get their hands on! I kept thinking that if we had him go on just one more ride, he would get the hang of it & stop freaking out. Wrong yet again! So, he spent time on the sidelines with me, watching everyone else go on rides for awhile & he was happy as a clam...

The big boys did some of the water rides & crazy coasters for awhile while Cohen took a break from his kiddie ride phobia. Here are Mike, Connor & Aiden on Rattlesnake Rapids about to get soaked...

And then they took a spin on the bumper cars...

Eventually, while Connor & I were taking a ride on the "Turn of the Century," or the swings as we call them, Mike attempted to take Cohen on a few more rides. He eventually found a ride that didn't make Cohen cry, the cars...

For some reason, he loved this ride & went on it willingly multiple times...

We all went on the carousel together...

Cohen was doing good at first...

But, freaked out yet again as soon as the ride began to move...even with Mike standing right by his side. What a weirdo! Dude, this is the CAROUSEL! You are not going to survive in this family if you freak on out the CAROUSEL!

After that, the big boys went on some other crazy rides, like the Space Scrambler while Cohen & I sat and watched...

Later that night, we tried a few more kiddie rides with Cohen. He seemed to be doing a little better! He only cried for the first minute of the ride, which is better than the entire ride...

And, Aiden discovered that Cohen did a lot better on rides when he would put his arm around him. It was the cutest thing ever. This isn't a very good picture, but you can kind of see Aiden's arm around his little brother, trying to comfort him...

It was so cute! When Cohen would start to cry, Aiden would wrap his arm around him, pull him in a little bit to snuggle and tell him it would be okay. You can see his arm wrapped around him in this picture too...

We finally left the park at about 10:00 that night! The kids were awesome! I kept asking them if they wanted to go home & they kept begging for "just one more ride." I was lucky to be able to get them out of there at 10:00...

Oh, and the reason there aren't many pictures of Connor and/or Mike is because they were constantly off at one of the rollarcoasters. They did Wicked, The Spider, Wild Mouse, Colossus, etc. Aiden was just slightly too short to do all of those rides, so (much to his dismay) he had to hang around the little rides with Cohen & I most the day.

Once we were in the car, I thought everyone would fall asleep quickly. But, just the opposite happened. Everyone started saying they were hungry. I realized we hadn't eaten dinner yet. We had a big lunch at about 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon & all of us had stayed pretty full up until that point. But, now that it was past 10:00 & there weren't awesome rides in front of us anymore, the kids thoughts started turning to their stomachs.

We decided to stop at a McDonalds on the way home. I thought we would get some food, the kids would fall asleep eating it & then we would be on our way again. Nope, they got a second wind & were all over the play equipment...

Where do they get their energy? Can I have just 1/10th of it, please? We finally talked them into coming over to the table to fill up their tummies, after about 20 minutes of playtime...

And then we finally headed for home! Luckily, everyone except Mike fell asleep shortly after. We pulled in around midnight & all headed straight for bed.

It was a long & tiring, but awesome day! A nice way to send summer out with a bang! Now next week, starting Wednesday, it's back to the ol' grind of the school routine. I am NOT looking forward to it! --Lindsay