Thrill rides

I have already said how Kaitlyn was really excited to ride all the big rides. The first roller coaster she rode I rode with her. I kept watching her face and she looked a little freaked but when we got off she said she liked it. She rode all the rides except 2 with John or Luke. My Dad would have loved to see her riding all these rides. He loved roller coasters too.

This is her on her first roller coaster. It is called the ninja.



This is a train roller coaster.




John, Kaitlyn and Kyle rode the big swings.



Luke and Kyle on the bumper cars.




Kaitlyn rode this ride all by herself. It moves real fast in circles then turns and continues moving in circles only they are going upside down.

The characters

We first saw Tweety, Pepe Le Pu, and Sylvester right when we entered the park on Wednesday. Kaitlyn went right up to them but Kyle was a bit shy of them. They had characters scattered all through the park and there was never a crowd around them. You could just walk up and hug them and get your picture made. Kyle finally warmed up to Marvin the Martian and the Tazmainan Devil of all people. After that he found them before anybody else spotted them. The only person he would not get his picture with was Wonderwoman because he said he wanted to see Superman (he just wanted to find superhereos all day). After he saw Batman in the parade he was on a mission to find him. We finally did on our way out of the park. Other characters we saw were the Joker, Speedy Gonzales, Porky the Pig, Scooby, and of course Bugs Bunny.

Hurricane Harbor

Hurricane Harbor is the waterpark part of Six Flags. We went there on Thursday. They have all kinds of slides and water to play in. Kaitlyn was again fearless and rode all the slides she could.

This is her on the green slide. It shoots you straight down. These 3 slides in the picture are called the speed slides. She also went down the blue one. I could not believe she went down the green one. They also had this slide called the Tornado. It was the best ride we went on. John, Luke, Roger and Kaitlyn rode first and then I went back and rode with Kaitlyn.





Kyle had fun playing in the kid section and playing on this boat.





Then John and I were horrible parents and made Kyle go down this huge red twisty slide. At first Kyle was excited and said he wanted to go down. We all rode in the raft together. Once we got to the top of the stairs Kyle decided he did not want to ride the slide. We told him we were not going back down and he would have to ride. Once we started down the slide he was so scared it was funny. His eyes were bugging out of his head. He did not even have time to cry. You can kinda see his face in this picture if you click on it.

Nascar Speedway

Today on our way out of St. Louis we stopped at the St. Louis Mills mall to go to this Nascar Super Speedway store. We got Kaitlyn, Kyle, John and Luke wristbands so they could do all the stuff over and over. They have 3 different go-kart tracks, bumper boats and several rides inside. Kyle rode this one ride over and over. Here is a little video of him riding:



Kaitlyn tried climbing the rock wall a couple of times.



And here is the kids and the "kids" riding the go-karts.

Grand Marshall

We had another great day at Six Flags today. I have lots and lots of more pictures that I will share when we return. But I do have to post about the excitement Kyle had today. We were waiting on John, Kaitlyn and Luke to ride this one ride and they decided to ride it twice (remember I said the lines were really short). Well Kyle and I walked down a little ways to go run through the sprinkler and cool off just a bit. While we were standing there Robin (as in Batman and Robin) came over and was talking to Kyle. Then he asked me "do you guys want to be in the parade?" (they have this character parade that goes throughout the park everyday at 4:30, we had watched it yesterday). I said "um, YES". We got to go behind this fence and get in the old timey car. This man hands Kyle this hat and says "hey dude you get to be the grand marshall for the parade and wear this cool hat". He was totally stoked. While we waited for the parade to start all the characters were talking to him and giving him high fives. He waved to all the people as we drove by. So our glory for today is: WE GOT TO BE IN THE PARADE!! So cool!

No lines, No waiting!

We had a great day today at Six Flags. We were there for over 6 hours. We rode lots of rides and saw lots of characters. Kyle was a little scared of the furry characters at first but he quickly warmed up to them. Kyle rode his first roller coaster and said he liked it but he didn't like the quick jerky turns it made so he did not want to ride anymore big rides (which was actually fine because he wasn't tall enough for most of them anyway). Kaitlyn on the other hand rode just about every ride. The first ride the boys rode was Batman and she didn't want to go. After she rode some other things she wanted to go back. We didn't get a chance to let her ride that one yet but we are going back tomorrow so I told her she could try then. The first one she rode was the Ninja. Upside down, twist and turns, and everything. She loved it! She rode all the rest of the rides with John and Luke except the Superman and Mr. Freeze (if you saw these you would know why). There were hardly any lines, the longest we waited for a ride was about 30 minutes and that was just a couple of them. I have taken 76 pictures so far but the internet here at the hotel is really slow, it took forever for those pictures to upload last night so I will upload when we get back. Tomorrow we are off to the waterpark, Hurricane Harbor, at Six Flags and will probably walk back through the park for a little bit again.

Arrived finally

Well we arrived in St. Louis about 5:30. Kyle must have asked a million times if we were almost there. Luke has a GPS that was so nice to talk to us the whole time and let us know how many more miles. The kids did better than I expected in the car. Once we got here we ate at Pizza Hut and then headed to the pool. The pool at the hotel is indoor and there is a game room along side it. The kids also had some fun playing air hockey. Tomorrow the real fun begins as we head to Six Flags. Kyle is so excited to ride the coasters!

The perfect cookie maker

That would be my mom. Her and 3 other women made the cookies for VBS last week. They made over 1000 cookies in 4 days. They used those huge tubs of cookie dough that you get at Sam's and just had to roll little balls and put them on the tray. My mom has to have the cookie dough balls that are the same size. By the second day the other three women were making so much fun (in love) of her and her perfect little cookies.

New Camera

I got a new camera today and I am super excited about it. My good camera that my mom had got me for Christmas of 2006 was broken and so I took it to try and get it fixed. It was going to cost me $208 to get it fixed. I could buy a new camera for that price. So I spent just a little extra (thanks to George W. Bush) and got a camera I have been coveting for a while. The Canon Powershot S5 IS. It is beautiful. I read the basic manual today (32 pages) but it also came with an advanced manual that I have to look at. Yea, it is 200 pages! I took several really good pictures of Kaitlyn and Aaliyah bating at softball tonight and then I took these of Kyle. It was still in sports mode when I took these.

Best VBS ever

VBS finished up last night and the kids had a really good time. I really do think it was one of the best VBS' ever. VBS is probably the biggest 'event' so to speak that the church does, a ton of work and a lot of people work to make everything happen. This year the fellowship hall was set up like a market place from Bible times. The kids went around to the different shops each night and then Jesus came through and they 'acted' out a Bible story.

Here are the centurions around the well.



The Bread Shop




Basket Weaving shop




The Fruit Shop




The Rope Shop




Pottery shop




Carpentry shop







The Blind Man



Jesus healing the blind man



Jesus speaking to the crowd




Now notice all those kids sitting around the well area. They were so good and quiet. The 'actors' did not have mics, yet in that large room of kids we had no trouble hearing and understanding what was going on. And afterwards the kids could not stop talking about everything that happened. That speaks volumes of what a great VBS it was. I mean Captain VBS is cool but this year it was more biblically centered (or at least that is my opinion) and it was great!

My $2.36 lesson learned

Good news, my John Doe ebay package came back to me in the mail today! I had already emailed the lady who purchased it and she was kind enough to tell me to wait about a week and see if it came back and if it did to then mail it to her. I just mailed it Friday and already got it back, I thought that was pretty quick. So I have just learned a $2.36 lesson and hopefully prevented you all from making this mistake too.

VBS

The kids are going to VBS at church this week. All the kids and adult workers are dressing up and wearing tunics. They divided up all the kids into the tribes of Judah. Here is a couple of pics of the kids waiting for VBS to start. I hope to get pics tonight of the set up in the fellowship hall, it is so cool.



Kaitlyn and Aaliyah


Kaitlyn and Adam (this could be one for the church senior video ;)

Teeball trophy

Tonight we had the end of the season family thing at Buckhead for the teeball season. They had pizza and gave out trophies. We also took our team photo tonight.





Here is all the teams that played this year.

Swimming party

My cousin is building a new house out in Oakland and while the house is not finished yet, the pool was. His daughter is about a year older than Kaitlyn so we went out for a swimming party. Kaitlyn swims well but Kyle cannot swim so I was a little worried about him. He just played around the edge and on the stairs but then he realized he could stand on his tip toes and touch in the shallow end. After that there was no getting him out of the pool.



Kaitlyn spent a lot of her time jumping off the diving board.