147th Passage

On Tuesday of our week in California we drove to Vallejo to go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. This was one of the most fun days for everyone, I think. We tried to get there just as the park opened, but they put their parking lot at least a mile away from the entrance to the park. Seriously. So we walked with hoards of people and then stood in line for awhile and by the time we got into the park it was already time for a bathroom break. :) 

But we finally got on our way. Discovery Kingdom is huge. We didn't realize how big it was until the afternoon. There were many sections with different rides that we didn't even make it to. We also saw lots of cool shows. 

First we saw a little show with tigers. Pretty cool.

 There was a circus type show, which was very entertaining. The picture is of someone using their feet to sort of juggle a hoola hoop and a ball and other crazy antics.

Allison spent much of the time enthralled.

We also saw an elephant demonstration. The kid even all got to feed and pet it!

We went to the Splash show too. We all got pretty wet. Poor Alli hated it.

We watched another show, which David and I thought was pretty annoying, but the kids got a kick out of it. It involved mostly people, but also sea otters, a walrus, and a little river otter, I believe.

There were lots of animals there to see, like in a zoo. The penguins were a favorite.

And the rides. Oh how we loved the rides...except David. He didn't hate them, but mostly we did kid rides and he almost always opted out to stay with Allison while I rode with the children, if it was a family ride. I love rides, so I was happy with that.

I even got to go on a real roller coaster. Morgan came with me! He got a little nervous and screamed for half of it, and on the way down his head was permanently forced down, but he said he loved it! Yay!

We are in the front of the third car from the bottom.

There were so many we didn't get to because we ran out of time. We thought we had a couple more hours, but the park closed earlier than we thought since school started that week and it was a week day. Bummer.
Lydia wanted to go on all rides, but she was too short for many. Poor thing had to sit out much more than she wanted. Nothing scared her. William and Owen sometimes sat out due to fear, but went on most of the rides that they could.
Alli was a champ. She just mostly sat in her stroller and sometimes got whiny, but most of the time she was great.

Then we had the huge trek back to the car. Boy were our feet sore. Here is a picture of the long line of people that goes so far into the distance that you can't see the end...

Here is a video of a couple of rides and when we fed the elephant. I don't remember what happened, but I either ran out of space, or I foolishly thought I was recording when I wasn't, so I missed everyone but William feeding the elephant.

146th Passage

All right, now that it's December I will finally add more blog posts about our family vacation to California!
Our second full day there, Monday, we went to Fairytale Townand the Sacramento zoo.

Fairytale Town was a blast. Lots of slides, and things to climb on for the kids.

 There was a playground with a wobbly balancing beam. The boys thought it was fun and did well...

 Lydia wasn't a big fan though.

I couldn't let them show me up.

 It's almost like a pre-curser for our Halloween costumes!

 One thing the boys thought was really cool were the palm trees. We don't see them anywhere we normally go, so the existence of them was neat for them to see. They all wanted to touch them.

 Years ago when they made the yellow brick road, Great Nana bought a brick and put the names of her children on them. We found their brick!

We thought this was fun to find too, since David's parents are Lisa and Jon, even Jon without an H! 

After Fairytale Town we grabbed lunch from the car and headed to the zoo. We did a little picnic there, then walked around. It was getting pretty hot and our feet were all sore by the time we left. 

We also went to David's cousin's house that afternoon and swam in their pool. Here is a video from that. Morgan was trying to dive, and William, though he can swim with no problems, and even swims in the deep end, was pretty scared to jump off the edge of the pool into the deep end. He finally did it though.