Saturday fun before we leave

So ever since we started planning our Missouri trip Mark wanted us to include Worlds of Fun.  And since Jessie, Abbie and Spencer had never been on a real roller coaster they were all for it.  There was a bit of a misunderstanding on when we had to buy our tickets to get the early discount and when we could use them which meant we ended up going on Saturday (don’t EVER do that!) instead of on Thursday. 

While we were at Worlds on Fun, Ken took the little kids and Grandma and Grandpa to the zoo since they had missed that due to naps.  They had a great time!  They got to see lots of animals that we didn’t see including the elephants eating their lunch, the hippos, and some deer.  They rode the train, the carousel and saw a bird show.  And Emma slept the whole way home.

Worlds of Fun was fun!  Spencer was measured and remeasured for every ride until we got him a wrist band that said we was exactly tall enough to ride the rides.  It was a lot scarier for him than he thought it would be…like WAY more scary, but he closed his eyes and squeezed my fingers off and screamed/cried until the ride was over.  Then he would reassure me that it was fun.  Our first ride was the Patriot where your legs dangle.

After about the second line the place was packed and you had to wait in line almost an hour for each ride :-(.  On the Viking Voyager all of us in the first boat got wet, but the second boat full came out dry, lucky!

Can’t remember the name of this one, but there was a poor very little girl that some guy took on this one that was terrified.  I felt so bad for her.  Spencer wasn’t a huge fan of this one either, but the line was pretty short and in the shade, double bonus!

The cab cars were extremely hard to drive!  Abbie, Jessie and Spencer ended up being our drivers and Jessie said that if real driving was like that she was fine never getting her license.  I assured her that real driving is much easier!

We left the park and got lunch at Subway.  Then headed over to the Oceans of Fun part.  The wave pool was definitely the best part of that!  And we found some inner tubes that others had abandoned so we didn’t have to rent our own.  The Fury of the Nile is still one of my favorites and they had the Mamba (which my dad helped design the breaks for) shut down for a while and we were lucky enough to get in line for that one right after it reopened which was amazing because by the time we got off that ride it would have taken two hours to get to ride it again.

The Timber Wolf  was killer on the body….I’m too old to ride that one now.  And we finished off with a really nice easy…..or so I thought…ride on the Farris Wheel.  But it was worse than half the other rides because you weren’t really strapped in and the seats rocked a ton and that was really scary.  So for our real last ride we went on the carousel which was very calm and peaceful only to had to look away at one part where they had unclothed people. 

Grandma reading scriptures to the kids.  Love this picture.

We were going to go to sacrament meeting on the road on Sunday morning, but none of the little towns meetings schedules overlapped when we were driving through so everyone picked a favorite general conference talk to listen to and we sang a lot of songs together.

The rest of Missouri

We had the rest of a fun week at Heather’s.  We played some freeze tag  which turned into tunnel tag (because that takes longer to unfreeze someone) in the backyard.  All the kids loved it when Dad was it.

The big kids, Heather, Grandma and Alexander and I went to the zoo while Ken helped my little kids take naps and Karina didn’t feel well.  We enjoyed the sea lion show after we saw the penguins.

We got in the wrong line and missed feeding the lorikeets this time :-(.  We rode the train which was super fun to see the tiger and the monkeys.

We also rode the bus and enjoyed walking around the Africa part of the zoo hoping to make it back in time to ride the air lift back to the bus.  We missed that but saw a ton of fun bird and watched the huge tortoise eating his dinner.

I think we were pretty much the last people at the zoo and had a lucky experience to watch the lions playing with each other.  It was so fun especially since mostly you just see the lions sleeping.  They were just like kids teasing each other!

It was pretty hot this day and after the very long walk back to the front of the zoo the kids were most excited about the water spraying fans!

Just before we left we got to see the polar bear playing with a fifty gallon drum in the water.  He was having a great time spinning it and flipping it around and the glass into that cage showed above and under the water so it was a great view.

While we were at the zoo, and after naps, Ken and the kids played the backyard.

When we got home Karina and Jessie made clover chain crowns and covered the front walk in sidewalk chalk while the rest of us played some games.

For my birthday we went “hiking” (not like a Utah hike, but a Missouri hike) to Cave Springs.  We had lunch there then followed several trails around through the woods.  The cave was more like an indent in some rocks, but it was very pretty and had a stream coming out of it.  We saw what was left of some old pioneer homes, mostly the chimneys.

Ken found his first four-leaf clover and we took some pictures of their pretty flowers.

My birthday dinner was haystacks!  Yummy!  And then I blew out a lot of candles.  It was so fun to be there with my family (and my friend Jennie who came to celebrate, but I just include her with the family).