Family, Family, so glad you're here!

Let Freedom Ring!

I will get to the 4th after just a little catch up.

Wyatt and friends ready to embark on a beach trip

They had a great time - at least Wyatt did.  He also failed to bring home his blankets, pillow and swim trunks.  I had admonished him to mark everything with his name before leaving.  He claimed he did, but I found very little marked in his laundry.  I hope his stuff shows up in the lost and found but am not holding out much hope since he left it in the hotel room.  UGH!  I am glad he had a good experience with his buddies though.  

Who doesn't love a hammock?  Julia has wanted one for a couple of years and finally found a good enough deal to get one. Now we are going to have to bathe that thing in bug spray or get one of those net covers.

Andy has a birthday this month.  In order to include Savannah and Julia, we celebrated on Monday.  Poor guy - that ended up being one sucky birthday.  A strong storm blew through delivering the real news that we do indeed have a serious roof leak that goes behind a wall - no telling how much damage is behind that wall.  On top of that, our cable box was fried by a power surge - hence the reason I didn't divide this post and post it in separate entries. That was the day that we learned that our vision insurance has changed and had quite the sticker shock for Wyatt's and Julia's eye appointments.  I should not have been surprised as Andy's benefits keep landing on the chopping block, and I can't really complain on this one because we still have vision insurance, and I still paid less than a lot of people do to correct their vision.  However, it went well beyond what I had budgeted even with the possibility of an increase in mind, and I have since learned that we owe even more than we were charged that day as they made a mistake in calculating our total. We also learned that Savannah was dealing with a really unsafe situation right outside of her door.  That situation has since been resolved and much precaution was taken during the waiting.  So that was fun - as Savannah would say about bad stuff (insert sarcasm font).  Anyway, as all adults know, birthdays aren't all fun, games and celebrations.  Sometimes they just suck.We are still doing better than we deserve.

How did we celebrate our nation's independence and freedom?  We started with one of my favorite church services of the year where we honored our military service personnel and celebrated our freedom to worship.

During our weekend group, this verse showed up.  It showed up lots after Mom died and now sometimes shows up around anniversaries regarding my parents.  So last Friday would have been my Dad's 75th birthday, and July 3rd would have been my parents' 49th anniversary.  I used to think that this verse came up so much because God was going to blow my mind.  Now I think it's just reassurance that my parents are doing just fine - better than I can ask or imagine.

Because a big family vacation (meaning one with my siblings and their families) is off the table this year, we did decide to try and get two family amusement park visits in as a group.  As we tried to work out dates, one of my sisters suggested just going on the 4th.  The park has a fireworks show, and everyone was off work anyway, so we decided to spend a day in the blistering heat at an amusement park (seriously heat index of 105- highly unusual in these parts).

For Kallie and Kinsley, this was a first, and they really enjoyed their day.  

Isaac (pictured above with Kallie) is in the unfortunate position of being the youngest and shortest of his siblings, and they are all so close in age.  Regan and Ira both passed the threshold of getting to ride some serious, big coasters this year leaving their younger brother behind.  They all know how many inches they are.  Isaac reads all the ride signs, and will say "if you are 48 inches tall, you can ride this. For me, it just says SORRY."  It's so funny. Jonathan said Isaac spent the entire day after our visit recounting how tall you had to be for each ride.  The kids had wristbands to make it easier on park employees to indicate how tall they were.  Every time I mentioned that Ira was 48 inches (the minimum height for most rides), he corrected me and said he's actually 49 inches, but his bracelet says 48.  

I have such pretty nieces.

Wyatt is not a fan of amusement parks.  There is an adjacent water park, so he and I opted to get out of the heat and into the wave pool and lazy river.  We spent about 2.5 hours there.  

For my kids I am sharing a little family history about this park.  When Tiffany and I were really little, our cousins (as in Susie's parents) took us to this park.  For some reason my dad did not go.  We returned so thrilled and talked so much about all that we did, my dad took us back.  Thus a family tradition was born.  We started going every year when we visited my grandparents.  We started our day with the same ride a boat ride called  Hanna Barbera land or something to that effect.  You rode through an indoor scene with so much going on, depicting every Hanna Barbera cartoon you can imagine, that you could truly find something new every time you road that ride.  It was always a great way to cool off on a hot day as it was nicely air conditioned. Eventually, they replaced it with Boo Blasters, and we stopped making it our first ride - still a nice air conditioned way to cool off, but the ride is not nearly so amazing.

I remember thinking this was the best place on earth and distinctly remember a conversation with my Dad where he expressed how wonderful Heaven will be, and I asked if it would be better than Kings Island.  I think I was in disbelief at the possibility.

Ultimately, we moved closer, and my parents would buy the family season passes to the park, so that became our family vacation - making several trips there per year.  I think we eventually made Hanna Barbera Land the first ride of the season rather than the first ride of our days there.

Here are some of my memories of doing this park with my parents. 

Ira laughs on even the scariest of rides. Julia used to always laugh too.  I don't ride coasters, so I can't say whether she still does that or not.  Mom always laughed on coasters.  I remember this because one of her friends commented that Mom's laughter made her willing to ride. 

Both Mom and Dad hated heights but were okay with coasters.  Dad, especially, hated the Farris wheel - thought it was the most terrifying ride in the park.

When I ride the Dodge Cars (or bumper cars), I love trying to go after my people and get them.  Dad always tried to see how many times he could get around without being hit or hitting anyone.

Dad kept track of how many rides were ridden, and what the price per ride was on any given day. Austin texted the family GroupMe to say he rode 20 rides yesterday.  I told him that Grandpa would have counted too and then would have divided out the price to know how much he spent on each ride.

Of course not all memories are good ones.  I think my kids already know about the time that I rode the smallest coaster in the park with my younger brother. I was ten years old and had my hands locked on the handle, and my eyes squeezed shut while my mom watched in horror from below as Jonathan tried to climb out of the car at the summit of the first hill.  The lady behind us reached over and yanked him into his seat and held him there.  I was clueless to all of this until I got off the ride. Jonathan would have been two at the time.  That kind of thing would be harder now as the coasters have seatbelt.  I learned that I can ride with little passengers and squeeze my eyes shut if my arms are locked around them.

There are some sweet sibling memories too.  Some of the most priceless pictures ever taken of Jonathan and Tessa were at Kings Island when he held her hand walking through the park and telling her about all the fun they were about to have on the next ride.  They were probably four and two at the time.

We sometimes camped in the adjoining campground.  I don't miss that - okay maybe I miss it a little.

Needless to say, my family has so many memories in this park.  I think I went every summer until I went to college after that first visit.  I intended to pass that tradition along to my kids, but we have not done so.

One thing different about spending the 4th in an amusement park is that not everyone attended.  Logan chose not to go, and we missed Zach and Savannah too (more on them later).  Normally, all of us would gather in the late afternoon or early evening and hang out eating too much until it gets dark enough to do fireworks.  

The fireworks show did not disappoint, but boy we were so tired.

Zach was already scheduled to work his second job when we decided to make this happen, so he could not go.  Savannah was not able to leave her summer internship for this.  It's so different this summer that Wyatt and Julia are the only ones taking summer adventures with us.  I knew this would come but figured that they wouldn't necessarily stop this at the same time.  It is just strange.  The reality though is that Wyatt likely would not have spent the day with us yesterday if Zach and Savannah had gone.  We usually left him with a friend or at home when visiting amusement parks in the past.  I don't know what we would have done on a holiday.

Leaving the park I asked everyone about their favorite part of the day.

Julia loved riding Diamondback.

Wyatt loved the fireworks.

Andy loved riding the White Water Canyon (a raft ride where you are almost guaranteed to get wet) with Ira.  Ira got soaked, but he kept talking about how his hair was "soaking,"  Andy thought it hilarious that Ira kept talking about his wet hair when he was drenched from head to toe.  

That Ira is a fun one.  Really, they all are.

After wearing ourselves out, Julia headed out for camp on five hours of sleep.  Yikes! I told her not to be salty with her sweet friend. She said it's not a problem, they've been friends long enough and are strong enough to be salty around each other and maintain that friendship.  Love that!  In all honesty Julia is not that difficult when she's in a bad mood.  I may be eating those words in a few years -lol

That's all here in this abode.  Hoping that the rest of summer brings more family time and fewer surprise expenses :)

Grateful for the brave who gave and continue to give us the freedom to celebrate independence and so much more. Freedom is never free!