Best Day Ever!

In just a week and a half, Number One Son will celebrate his eleventh birthday. It's hard to believe that he used to weigh only 3lbs just over a decade ago. Although, he always has been something of a stringbean, this summer his body started to fill out a little around the love handle region. He has shot up almost sixteen pounds since last February. He must have thought his little sister was trying to catch him.

So with N1S's midsection expanding, we decided to do a pre-birthday workout at Valleyfair amusement park. N1S invited his friend, D, and the three of us headed out on our thrill seeking adventure. Sweet Pea likes amusement rides too, but she is too small for most of the 'good' rides. And Lady Di's heart rate rises just by mentioning the word 'roller coaster', so the ladies stayed home. N1S and myself are thrill ride junkies. Once we told N1S about the trip to the amusement park, he couldn't talk to anyone without starting the conversation with, "Guess where I am going?"

We arrived at 10:30am and made a bee line for the nearest roller coaster. The rest of the day was spent darting from ride to ride. And we made it to every big ride that the park had. Not only did we ride every ride, we rode them each multiple times. We rode in the front car, the back car, and the middle car of each roller coaster. N1S achieved his goal of holding his arms up on each roller coaster for the entire ride. Our favorite coaster was Wild Thing. Not only was it the fastest and highest roller coaster, it also travelled through a pitch black tunnel at the end of the ride.

We rode the blue Power Tower that shoots you straight up so that your spine is an inch shorter after the ride. We also stretched our spines back out on the red Power Tower which lifted us up at a painfully slow, anxiety building pace. Once we reached the stratosphere, we lingered at the top for a few long seconds to admire the entire city and dodge airplanes before being rocketed down.

Our favorite ride in the whole park, though, had to be Steel Venom. With this ride our seats hung from a horseshoe shaped ride with our feet dangling and would launch us forward and up into the sky to one end, then speed us backward to go up the other end of the horseshoe. And just for fun, the ride would stop at one of the ends and try to shake us out of our seats fifty feet above the ground.

We also rode some 'wet' rides, drove Go-Karts and visited the water slide park.

I think I had just as much fun as the boys did. As the day progressed into evening, Lady Di called to see if we were on our way home. "Sorry, Hon, the boys want to ride some more." And by boys, I meant all three of us. I had never been to an amusement park at night and I wanted us to see the park's lights. We didn't leave until 9:30pm and even then it was difficult to pick a ride to end our night.

We decided to end our evening on the same roller coaster that started our day. With the marquee lights flashing and the tracks rumbling, it didn't disappoint.
Overall, N1S was pretty satisfied with his pre-birthday outing. It's not every day that we both get to enjoy eleven hours of thrill rides. With as much as we were tossed around, I'm surprised my bones were still in the correct places to make it back to the car. The day was hot and muggy. We did a lot of walking and a fair amount of waiting in line for the rides. But it was well worth it and I can't wait for N1S's twelfth birthday.