4th of July weekend

I know it's now July 22nd, but it's just taken me this long to get to blogging about our 4th of July weekend. We rented a house in Hot Springs Village with our best friends, Doyle and Mandy as well as their son Ty. We left early on Friday the 4th and drove the 2 1/2 hours to Hot Springs Village. Sidenote in the story:We are really close to having Paige fully potty trained, so when she told us that she needed to stop and go, well, we stopped and she went!

A special thank-you to my wonderful hubby for snapping this precious picture with his camera phone...Bless your heart, Honey...really.

We were able to check into our house early and drop off Doyle's 4 wheeling Jeep (more on that later!). While at the house, we sunscreend the kids up, put swim diapers on, and changed into swimsuits...we were heading for Magic Springs! The weather had been iffy all day, but we were determined to go and get our money's worth out of our tickets...literally within 5 minutes of walking into the park, the rain came. We kept on going and withstood about 3 10-15 minute mini-storms. After those passed, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day! Ty and Paige loved riding the rides-Paige asks to go back just about every single day. We couldn't believe how well behaved our kids were either...I mean, we know we are very blessed with exceptionally good children, but traveling for 2 plus hours, not getting any kind of a nap, plus dealing with rain can spell disaster for some, but we were incredibly proud of our kids! They were champs!

Here's our family picture of the day...see how wet we are? Yeah, it was raining HARD!!


Paige and her Daddy riding the balloons-she LOVES them. Seriously. Could ride them ALL. DAY. LONG.


I'm normally a chicken on rides, but I thought I could handle the kiddie portion of the park and I did!




Yep, that's me and my crazy face. I have no clue. That's all I can say about that!

That's Paige and I way up high in the balloon...pink, I might add. That's the only one Paige woud ride!

Stephen, Doyle, and Mandy decided they were crazy enough to ride something called "The Hawk"...it's a huge bird like thing that takes you upside down and hangs you in the air...really stupid, if you ask me, but anyway. I decided to let them take their lives into their own hands and I would stay firmly planted on the ground with the kids. Don't they look exicted to see their parents fall to their own peril?

Magic Springs has huge catfish ponds and they have catfish food available to feed to these enourmous fish and of course we bought some. Paige loved watching them come to the top of the water to eat.

Another fish feeding picture...

Stephen and Doyle took Paige and Ty on the train ride and for some reason let the kids decide where to sit...see what they chose? The caboose. Not built for adult legs, boys!

Paige and her Daddy after the train ride...such a good picture!

The child-adored carousel! Paige could ride this over and over again.

On the carousel again...

It was finally time to head to the water park side of Magic Springs...and the kids loved this even more!

It's amazing that a small fountain of water coming from the bottom of the pool can provide such amusement!

This ride is called Dr. Dean's Dizzy Machine...or something like that. It basically lifts you up and down until you feel like your heart is in your stomach and vice versa. I actually rode it with Mandy before Stephen and Doyle rode it and I literally cried. I know, I'm a baby. I hate rides like this, but I was trying not to be a sissy, so I did it. NEVER AGAIN. I looked at Stephen while we were at the top of the ride and said "Whatever you have to do to get my off of this ride, DO IT NOW!"

This is Paige at the end of a long day...doesn't she look sweet and precious?

We had every intention of watching the huge fireworks display put on in Hot Springs Village that night, but by the time we got pizza to take back to the house we were all pooped. We definately HEARD the fireworks, though...we thought it might be WWIII...seriously! It lasted for 45 minutes. Apparently we missed one heck of a fireworks show!

The next day, Stephen and Doyle took off to the Offroad Park to take his Jeep on some trails. Doyle and Mandy do this quite often, but Stephen and I hadn't ever gotten to go with them. Mandy and I took the kids shopping with us and the boys had their own fun. I was promised a ride in the Jeep, but the rain stopped us from doing that. In fact, the rain stopped the boys from "jeeping" anymore, but not before this happened:

Yep, that would be the Jeep flipped on its side-the side that my husband was sitting on. Doyle and Stephen are both perfectly fine and they loved flipping, but needless to say it "flipped" me out and not in a good way!

We had a great 4th of July weekend-filled with good friends and great food too!