New Adventures

A few weeks ago, in our end-of-summer countdown, we went with our church to a local amusement park.  By "local", I mean not 6 Flags, not an hour away, and not $60 each to get in.  By "with our church", I mean about 6 families from the church who met at the park and hung out with each other while the children rode and ate and otherwise competed to see who could reach nausea first.  (Actually, to the best of my knowledge, no one threw up or came very close.)

This is one of those smaller, older, slightly seedy looking places that probably did a good business before the larger parks went REALLY large-scale, and now eke out a living catering mostly to birthday parties and school groups.  (This one seems popular with Hasidic schools, last time we were there it was a boys school, this time, a girls school.  Makes for interesting people watching.)  Weeknights are usually pretty uncrowded so the kids can ride the same ride over and over if they want.

JC declined to go, as I recall, he was hanging out with a friend.  John was working late.  So it was Rachel, William and I.  Rachel's plan was to "be the big kid" and help ride with younger kids so parents didn't have to (yay Rachel!).  William's plan was to slide down the big slide (on the burlap bags).  And that was it.  "I don't like rides, they make my tummy feel funny."  This has been the case for a couple of years now, so I didn't really expect much.

Except...

One of the little girls, when we got there, was riding the "Drop Zone" over and over (and over) again. She's about 3.  William watched her for a bit, and then I think he decided that if this little peanut of a girl could do it, maybe he could to.

He's in the center seat.

It was like the floodgates opened.  He rode more than half the rides, including most of the ones that make me sick, and especially the roller coaster.

This one was mellow.  Peanut is in front of him.

You can just see the top of her head.  William was the Big Kid on this one, she was too short to drive.

This one makes ME feel really sick.  He rode it about 5 times in a row.  Or more.  Rachel's on the left side of the back row, William is on the far right of the same row.

Don't ask me what changed, but he was a maniac.  It was like he finally conquered the fear and all that was left was fun.  I was happy for him, and also glad he's grown up some.

Best part?  He was tall enough to go on every single ride by himself.  I didn't have to go on any.