Vacation travels

I've been wanting to start blogging about vacation before I Have a chance to forget all the good stuff that happens, but I have been so busy since I got home I haven't really had a chance to write anything.

I can't really start at the beginning and write it all, but I did want to tell a tale of our trip to Silver dollar City.

When I was a kid, SDC wasn't that exciting. It was OK, but I don't remember it so much for the rides as I remember it for exhibits. But, my goodness, I liked it now. The food was everywhere and it smelled fantastic. Unfortunately, I only had about $15 so I couldn't eat everything I wanted to eat. That and we were with my mom who never buys park food, and my brother and his wife and kids who had plenty of snacks from home. We didn't need the food, but I wanted it ALL. We were going to dinner that night and it would be plenty, but boy it was hard to skip it all. I only got 1 container of homemade potato chips and a funnel cake in addition to dinner, and Maggie and I shared with all the kids so we didn't pig out too much.

I haven't had much of a chance to be around my nephews and niece and they were all a lot of fun. Travis is 7 and in the 2nd grade. Reagan is 5 and in Kindergarten and Truman is almost 2. Truman ate all day long...when I got the funnel cake at the end of the day he followed me down the aisle (we were in a show) wanting funnel cake. I think he liked it as much as I did. He also liked his brother and sister's smoothies too. He's such a cute little mooch...who could care! Reagan took to Maggie right away and Maggie seemed to enjoy the younger kids more than I would have expected. They took turns riding with her on rides and it was fun for her to be the older, popular kid after spending part of the summer being the little kid.

At one point in the day I got off a ride and Cindy, my sister-in-law told me that Truman had asked to ride on a ride with me. It was so cute, I was so impressed that his verbal skills were that well developed. Mostly, he pointed at the balloons (bawoon or baba) and me (awa) We had a great time. He's such a cutie! And for once Maggie didn't act jealous. Cindy doesn't ride many rides as she gets motion sickness, but she enjoys the hanging out. Truman reached a milestone on this day. HE was finally 36 inches and big enough to ride almost all the tamer rides with supervision and the kiddy rides alone.

The biggest laugh of the day came from Travis. He wanted us to ride a ride called Splashdown. We had ridden some other rides and my mom had told me the kids sometimes get wet and brought us a towell so I knew that dampness was out there. I wans't all that worried about it b/c it was a warm, but not hot day and I figured getting wet would be fun as it usually is. The other rides we had ridden didn't get me very wet and this was the last water ride. I asked Travis if I was going to get wet and they said that it depended on where I sat in the raft. I didn't see the ride going in, so I didn't have a clue what the ride was like. My brother suggested I leave my cell phone with my mom, but I had been doing that on all the wet rides, so that was no big deal. We got up to the top of the ride and I saw that the ride didn't sport cars or boats, but rafts...like the kind you find in the water park, not at the amusement park. At that moment, I thought (now, remember, I'm blonde) "How will I NOT get wet?" I asked Travis again and he told me that it depended on where I sat in the raft. I got in the raft and they sent us on our way (Maggie, Reagan and I were in the raft together) I didn't make it to the first time and I was soaked down to my underwear. I was wetter than I had been at Ocean's of fun on Monday before after going in the swimming pool. I was totally soaked. Travis had a huge laugh and told me that it's not where you sit in the raft it's if you're in the raft you'll get wet. Evidently the time before they had tried to get my mom in the raft and she didn't want to do it b/c she hates to get wet. Then after she saw how wet they all were she wouldn't do it again, so he finally got to play his trick on me. I was so wet that I still had damp clothes when we got home at 8pm.

The photo at the top is last year's photo of my brother and his family.