more flags, more fun

Those of you who live in the STL area, or any area with Six Flags advertisements will recognize that title. The kids have been saying it non-stop this week knowing we were headed that way!

We've had a week full of sun and water and just plain old summertime fun and it's been great.
I've said every summer that I just want to take it easy and focus on fun and it never really happens. Well this year, with having the house for sale and not really being able to be in the middle of any big projects and wanting to be ready to get the heck out of dodge with as short of notice as possible so not being involved in any church commitments or anything of the like, the kids and I have been able to take full advantage of soaking up the summer. Literally.

Also, I've handed off Caleb duties as well, so my responsibilities list is even more diminished.

Basically I make sure the house is clean, my kids are fed and other than that- we are golden. Again- Literally.
Um, can you say tan??
















(and yes, he's always sunscreen protected. the boy was blessed with his daddy's give-me-an-ounce-of-sun-and-I'll-look-like-I'm part-hispanic summertime skin)

We've logged more hours at the pool in the last week than we know what to do with. Honestly; every day, all day, that's all we do.

We did switch it up a little on Wednesday and hit up one of the free summer movies out at The Mills Mall and afterward I took the kids to a new waterpark out that way.
This park has only been around for a couple of summers and I've heard great things about it. It did not disappoint!
















Tons of fountains, waterslides, giant dump buckets, waterfalls a whirlpool and a wave pool for little ones.

































































There's a huge blue bouncy bubble slide thing... that was awesome! There are hand/foot holds all up some sides of this giant bubble and then at the top you can bounce or slide down into the water. The kids loved it!



































































Also a great lazy river -that turns into a crazy wavy river every 15 min or so- that we spent a lot of time in.






































The park also had two big tube waterslides that we skipped (Sawyer is too little) and we didn't even touch the regular competition sized pool. Well, Savannah went over there for a dip real quick and contemplated the diving boards, but chickened out.





























After just two hours of playing there the kids were asking to leave... I think they were just wiped out. Which turned out to be a correct assumption as Sawyer fell asleep on the 30 min drive home. I cannot remember the last time Sawyer fell asleep in the car. Wow.

Thursday we spent the entire day back at our pool and then had friends join us for a pizza dinner down there. That was really fun and we stayed until they closed the pool down for a swim meet at 8pm!!

Friday Ryan was home for the long holiday weekend and we wanted to take advantage of this perfect summer weather we've been having (seriously, I think I'm back in Oregon with the great sunny 85° days... and NO HUMIDITY!!) so we decided to get out and do outdoor stuff it's normally miserable to do in St Louis in July. We headed out to Six Flags for the day. And I mean for the day. We were there from 11am til after 6pm.... and I think that's a lot for a four and a seven year old! We hit up both the waterpark and the amusement park and we had a ton of fun. I was honestly shocked that it wasn't busier... the weather was absolutely perfect; hot enough for the water rides to feel great and refreshing but not so hot that it was torture to stand in the lines. Perfect. And we never waited in line for anything for more than 15 minutes. Lots of rides we just about walked right on to. It was awesome. I actually felt like our day whizzed by because we just did ride after ride after ride without the usual down time of standing in line forever. It was great.

I didn't bring my camera because I knew we were going to spend a lot of time in the water and I thought to myself, "oh, we've gotten pictures at Six Flags before...". But I wish I would have because we had a lot of great memories this time. This was the first year that Sawyer was tall enough for lots of new rides and Savannah was tall enough to ride everything. Not that she rode much new stuff (she's not quite as brave as Sawyer), but she was just glad she could if she wanted to!! The kids did the Wahoo Racer water slide over and over... Savannah loved that one. And of course we spent some time riding the waves in the wave pool. We did the Big Kahuna and spent a lot of time at the Treehouse slides since Sawyer wasn't tall enough for those last year... he was thrilled to be able to do them this year! After we were all watered out we had a snack and headed over to dry out on the regular rides. Not too dry though, as we of course did the favorite Thunder River and the Log Plume. We did Scooby's Scary Swamp, the "Shazam" scrambler and lots of the Looney Tunes rides, and then Sawyer did his first roller coaster!! Ryan took him on the Tony Hawk Big Spin and he loved it! Savannah opted out of that one (we went to wait on the carousel instead :) ) but Sawyer rocked it! Ryan said that Sawyer kept saying, "this is not safe!" as they were spinning around but as soon they were done he said it was Awesome! Sawyer was hilarious... on every thrill ride he just laughed the whole time. I sat with him on the scrambler ride and he was just cracking up, like I thought he was going to hyperventelate!! And as we got off of every single ride the first thing out of his mouth was, "Let's do that one again!!". Loved it.
We're going to try our hardest to head back there again before we move (we have season passes we want to take full advantage of) and I'll for sure bring my camera as I need to try and capture some of the joy on this daredevil boy's face!!

Sawyer fell asleep -again- on the way home last night. Wiped. Out.
And both kids slept until after 8 this morning... which may not seem like much to some of you, but for my kids that's monumental sleeping. Finally. I've had early morning risers (like sometimes 5:30 early) all summer so far, so it's nice that they're finally taking advantage of being able to have later mornings. I'm hoping for a few more of those, as we have a couple of late nights coming up with the 4th of July festivities this weekend!!