"Have a Six Flags Day!"

As I've mentioned previously, we spent the first full week of summer spending time with family that came to town to visit. I'll do a separate post of a hodgepodge of pictures, but I had to do a Six Flags post first. I hate to admit it, but I don't have a ton of pictures. What I do have is an awesome story. Not only is it funny, but it totally lends itself to a teaching moment on word choice. Glorious... at least to this nerdy English teacher! : )

Rewind to Friday, June 11. The bravest of the family gathered at Mom and Dad's to make our pilgrimage to the one, the only... Six Flags!! The bravest included Tara, Steve, Sophie (8) and Tessa (2, almost 3); Megan and Parker (17, I think, which makes me cringe to think I'm old enough for him to be a SENIOR!); Dad, and Jeremy, Luke, and me. Jeremy and I had no idea how Luke, not even 21 months old, would handle the park, but we rolled the dice and went for it.

So, we pull into the park and approach the parking gate, where we shell out an ungodly amount of cash to park so we could pay an ungodly amount for admission. As we got our change, the attendant sent us on with the greeting... or warning, I suppose: "Have a Six Flags Day!"

[I'll pause for the dork-out English teacher moment: why not a good day? A great day? Well, because they know, as well as you do, that yes, you'll have some fun. You'll ride some exciting rides, eat some good food, have some laughs. But you'll also be agonizingly hot. If you're over 30, you'll feel queasy on everything, even the freakin' lame-o sombrero ride, and you'll spend the day painfully aware that you are SO not as young as you used to be. Also unsettling: you'll see a lot of really overweight people in really snug spandex. Props to the theme park people: this greeting is a triumph of diction!]

So Jeremy and I are chuckling at this welcome/warning. I swear that not even two seconds after we hear this, we hear a kid no older than 10 say to his sister, "Oh yeah? Well I hate you, too!" And they were walking into the park. At 10:30 a.m. Awesome!

Anyway, I've been wordy enough: pictures!

Luke's favorite part of the park by far was not an actual ride, but the misters. He ran back and forth through them until he was DRENCHED. I didn't mind too much, really; it kept him cool on a really hot day!

Luke enjoyed the sombrero ride (as I mentioned before, I almost barfed. Humiliating.), the carousel, the log ride, and the Speedy Gonzales train, into which his daddy was so kind as to fold himself into:

Because we were very tired, we decided to head home for a nap about three hours after we arrived. Did Luke take that nap? Oh, of course not. But we had the best of intentions at the end of our "Six Flags" day. Luckily, for us at least, it was more positive than negative!