Carowinds

Today Joel and I took the kids to Carowinds, which (for those of you who don't know) bills itself as the largest amusement park in the southeast, and is located about 20 minutes south of us in Fort Mill, SC. I was actually kind of surprised that Joel suggested we go to Carowinds, because he professes to hate amusement parks, and if you consider that fact, add in 2 little kids and 90+ degree weather, well, let's just say I thought Joel was either very brave or very insane to suggest it. But since I am also either very brave or very insane, I enthusiastically supported the idea.

We arrived at Carowinds at about 10:30 this morning where we started off with some kiddie rides (I was going to say "before the weather got too hot", but it was already too hot). They have a whole Peanuts themed section of the park with rides for preschool/elementary age kids including a mini roller coaster (which Becca wanted to go on but Ben did not).

We spent most of the day, though, in the water park. We rented a cabana by one of the wave pools, which had a table, chairs, bucket of ice with bottles of water, lock box for valuables, and a TV. No air conditioning in those cabanas, just a ceiling fan, so still very hot, but shady. I thought it was money well spent especially with the TV, because Becca took several breaks to sit in the shade and watch Noggin and chew on ice, and was very happy ;) You could also order food and they would bring it to your cabana, so we did that for lunch so we didn't need to drag the kids around looking for food. It was also handy because there was a mid-afternoon rain storm, and while everyone else got soaked/ left to try to find shelter, we stayed in our cabana (where Ben tried to "barricade" us in using an inner tube and a table). So in the end I felt the cabana was worth it.

Ben's favorite part of the park seemed to be the wave pool -- he loves those and tries to go as deep as he can and find the biggest waves which strikes me as funny because it took us like 4 years to get him to set foot in the ocean because he is afraid of waves. He also went on many of the water rides, some with me and some with Joel. He loves the water slides where you sit on an inner tube and the thing is like 4 stories high and pitch black inside. Becca preferred the toddler-friendly spraygrounds and little water slide but seemed to have as much fun in her own way as Ben did.

The amazing part of the day was that we stayed at the park until 6pm, went out for dinner on the way home, then stopped at Ben and Jerry's for ice cream, and when we got home (by that time at about 8:30) the kids both immediately jumped out of the car, grabbed tricycle and scooter, and started chasing each other around the cul de sac. In other words - BOUNDLESS ENERGY! Joel and I meanwhile, utterly exhausted. But it was a good day.

Below some pics though only a few since we spent most of the day in the water park, I didn't have the camera out much. The last picture, unfortunately in silhouette because he was standing in the doorway of the cabana, is Ben wearing my sunglasses while picking his nose. Good stuff.