Sorry I haven’t been the most devoted blogger the last few days…between being out of town and coming home with company, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to be on the computer.

We’ve had a great few days though. We spent two nights in a hotel, and one very full day at the amusement park. Here are two things that were confirmed to me this trip. One, my kids are great travelers and a whole lot of fun to do things with. A lot of people seem to think that these sort of things would be a hassle with our family, but they aren't. They are a blast! And two, my kids are a whole lot braver than I was as a kid! They rode all sorts of rides at the amusement park…even Ben got on two of the roller coasters, which completely surprised us.

My oldest son Nathan has always been scared of most rides, and he really had fun trying some new things. My six year old Shane, is the dare devil of all dare devils and will ride anything and everything he is tall enough to get on (which just by the rubber on the bottom of his sandals, was everything this trip). He even got on this crazy thing with Josh that you had to pay extra to do…they load two people into a steel ball, that gets “catapulted” through the sky. IKES! It’s such a big attraction that there is a camera in the ball and a giant screen TV on the ground so people can see the faces of the people on the ride. After watching a bunch of grown ups go and look more than a bit ill, everyone was talking about the little boy who got on and laughed the whole time. :)

The entire day was fun…the little kids rode the little kid rides, the big kids rode all sorts of things and we went on several things all together like the log flume, rapids ride and the go-carts. We got there when the park opened and left when it closed, and I can definitely say that “a good time was had by all”.

A lot of people ask us how we do hotel rooms…well, we get two adjoining rooms, which gives us four double beds. We put two kids each in three beds, Marcus in one bed with Josh and me, and two on the floor in sleeping bags. They all slept great and we had so much fun. If you were to ask the kids what the highlight of the trip was, I bet at least a few would say that it was Mom letting them have donuts for breakfast one day.

We got three “comments” over our three day trip. We had one wonderful woman who came up to us at the airport while we were waiting for my brother and sister to arrive, who came over just to tell us how well behaved all the kids were being (the flight was delayed and we were there quite a while). The next day, a lady was unloading her two kids from her car and as we walked by she said to one of her kids, “Look at all the kids they are babysitting.” Understandable mistake I suppose, but still icky to hear. The last one came from a man who was in the restaurant we were in on our drive home. I went into the play area and started rounding up my kids, and he asked how many kids we had. When I told him, he laughed and admitted to having nine of his own (now grown).

After getting home on Friday night and taking a bit of a break on Saturday, we spent yesterday at the lake. As I write this most of the kids are still sound asleep in that deep sleep that fun in water and the sun causes. We have five extra adults in the house but things are surprisingly calm still. It’s great fun for me to watch the kids play chess with their uncles and get the same uncles to jump on the trampoline and all of the other fun things they’ve been doing.

Anyway, we are home again, home again and I will be back to being your devoted blogger asap. :)