Worlds of OH MY GOODNESS!

::WARNING::  This is extremely long!

Last Friday, I took the kids to Worlds of Fun with my mom, my sister, 2 of her daughters (Mariah and Bailey), and her daughter's friend. 

I remember going here as a kid and being so excited, that the night before, I would get basically no sleep.  I still love going, although my excitement about it has waned a bit.  ;)

I love taking my kids now, and seeing that same excitement on their faces.  Laney, Chloe and Elijah have been before.  It was Isaac's first time, and he had a blast!

It was Jett's first time too, but he didn't really get to do too much besides riding in the stroller. ;) He did ride the train, but I didn't get a picture of him on it.

The girls always love going, and this time, Chloe was tall enough to ride some of the bigger rides!

This isn't one of them, though. :)

Oh, and then there's Elijah...

Let me just say that, out of all of the trips I've ever taken to Worlds of Fun, this has topped the list of the most entertaining and unusual.  And this kid is half the cause of that. 

My mom was watching the 3 boys near the exit of one of the roller coasters, and we had all just gotten off, and were standing around, planning where to go next.  My sisters looks over at Elijah, and yells "Oh my gosh, Sarah!!  Look at him!!!"

I look over, and there he is...standing there in front of *thank goodness* only a couple of families, pants and underwear pulled completely to his ankles, relieving himself.  I shrieked, pulled his pants up as far as I could to let him finish relieving himself (I couldn't stop him at this point) and died of utter embarrassment.  I apologized to the families, and they were thankfully not weird about things like that.  I was expecting to look up and see the judgmental rolling of their eyes and the shaking of their heads at my parenting fail.  I felt grateful when they just laughed it off and accepted my apology.  Apparently they've been there before, or somewhere like that. :)

Another Elijah adventure happened when I wasn't there to witness it.  My mom and Mariah's friend had all the kids in the kid area of the park while me, my sister, and my niece were elsewhere in the park (I'll explain that in a second.)  We arrive back in the kid area, and my mom looks at me and says "You won't believe what Elijah did."  I'm thinking Yeah, I probably will believe it, and it won't surprise me.  She put him on this ride that is similar to the carnival ride with the cars just driving in a circle, but this one had boats in water.  He gets out after the ride is over, and jumps into the water!  It only went up to about his waist, but she says the worker is just standing there, like she didn't know what to do (like, no other kid has ever done this before?).  So my mom runs and pulls him out and he says "But I want to be a dolphin!"  I honestly don't know what to do with him sometimes...

So to expound on where me, my sister and my niece were earlier...  My niece walks up to us while we're waiting for the kids to get off of a ride, and says "Hey mom, I bought you and me tickets to do the Ripcord.  I looked at her and said "Good luck" (or something along those lines).  Mariah looks at me and says "I bought one for you, too."  I was excited, but a little nervous.  The ride was amazing.  I don't mind the free falling...I was more worried about the thing cables breaking, or the harness ripping while we were on it.  We survived it, obviously ;), and it was extremely awesome!!!  I called Mike just before we went on it to talk to him one last time.  You know, just in case. :)  I'm just sad that we don't have any pictures of it. :(

So one more exciting thing that happened was that Chloe went on the newest roller coaster they have there called the Prowler.  It's a wooden coaster, so I was thinking that it wouldn't be all that aggressive.  WRONG!  I have been on more than a few roller coasters in my life, and this one was by far one of the fastest, most intense coasters ever!  I had never been on it, so I had no idea it would be like that...if I had, Chloe for sure would have not had my permission to ride it.  I was so worried that she was being shaken to death, but she actually loved it and wanted to go on it a second time!  I'm so proud of her!!  I didn't let her go on it a second time, but I might if we go back this summer. 

Anyway, that was our interesting trip to Worlds of Fun.  We all had fun and I was burnt, tired and nauseated by the end of the day, so it was a success! :)

 Life can be like a roller coaster...

And just when you think you've had enough,

and your ready to get off the ride and take the calm, easy merry-go round...

You change your mind, throw you hands in the air

and ride the roller coaster all over again.

That's exhilaration...that's living a bit on the edge...that's being ALIVE.

~Stacey Charter