August 29, 2010 Michigan's Adventure

All summer long the kids did chores and earned "credits" toward a trip to Michigan's Adventure. They talked about it all summer and kept having discussions about which rides they would like and which ones they might or might not be tall enough to ride. We planned our Michigan's Adventure day to occur during our camping trip in Muskegon so that Grandma and Grandpa could come and help watch kids while we were on rides with the older kids. Things didn't turn out quite as we had planned because the only day that worked out to go with the weather was a day that Paul had to work, so we ended up having to go without him. We had a great time anyway, and can't wait to take him with us next year. We even got Grandma and Grandpa to go on some rides with us.

Ready for our big day.

The first ride we headed for was the Big Dipper or should we say the Little Dipper. It was the perfect introduction to a small size roller coaster to see which kids liked to ride. The answer: ALL OF THEM - even Sam loved the ride and wanted to go again.

One of the nice things about taking the kids at this age, was that all of them were still small enough to go on the little rides with each other - and yet big enough to go on some of the bigger rides too.

I was very proud of Nicholas all day long. He patiently took Sam under his wing and went on all the little kids rides with him. He was very mature in not being all about the roller coasters but worked hard at making a fun day for everyone.

I couldn't resist this picture as the girls waited in line for Bee-Bop Boulevard. As they watched the people go in front of them and climbed the steps to get to where you get on the ride they walked hand in hand.

Bee-Bop Boulevard

Sam and Grandma even let someone else go ahead of them so they could get this Corvette.

It was now time for another roller coaster. Zach's Zoomer was a little bit bigger, a little bit faster and a little bit bumpier than the previous roller coaster - but once again they all loved it. This time we had Grandpa along for the ride and Sam actually was disappointed when the ride was done. He thought that every ride would go around 2 times like the first roller coaster did.

The kids loved the Frog Hopper and actually went on it a couple of more times throughout the day.

Gabrielle had been talking about the Mad Mouse all summer long. She kept praying that she would be tall enough to go on it. Thankfully, she was - or I would have had one very disappointed little girl. Allison was actually tall enough too - but opted to go on the helicopter ride with Sam instead.

In addition, the roller coasteres and kiddie rides - all of the kids also liked the twisty, turny, spinny rides and giggled and laughed their way through from beginning to end.

This ride did not prove to be one of Sam's favorites, actually it isn't one of mine either but I ended up going twice because the girls wanted to. The Sea Dragon does a number on one's stomach, that's for sure.

We had not spent most of the morning going on almost every ride. Sam was always tall enough to accompany us and we were having a great day. Little did we know however, that Sam wasn't tall enough for the bumper boats. We didn't find that out until we had waited in line and already had his life jacket on. This ended up being one of the few times throughout the entire day that we had tears, and to be honest, I didn't blame him - he was one heartbroken little boy and he watched his sisters be able to go on the ride that he had so patiently waited to enjoy.

What's a trip to the amusement park without a ride on the carousel.

By afternoon, we were getting quite hot and irritable. The waterpark was a welcome reprieve and we were thrilled to find out that they had a wonderful kids area - complete with giant bucket dump.

(Note: - the pictures are quite sparse here, because Grandpa's battery started to go dead on the camera).

After cooling off in the waterpark, we allowed each of the kids to pick one more ride to do before we headed back to the campground.

Nicholas' choice, that he had patiently waited for all day was the corkscrew. We were lukcy and Grandpa actually was able to catch us on the "flip side".
(we are in the 2nd row from the left of the picture - you can see my orangish colored shirt).

We finished the day with the log-ride and the ferris wheel but have no pictures of us coming down the big hill because the battery went dead. It was a great day, the kids did wonderfully, had a ton of fun and are already talking about next year.