Skip to main content

WOA!

Yesterday we went to the Water Park Of America with the girls' cousins. A good time was had by all, although 3 adults to 6 kids is not a big enough ratio...

Eleanor wants me to write about her favorite part (and Amanda's favorite part): the family raft. First you climbed the stairs to the tippy-top floor (the 10th floor). There was an elevator that brought the 8-feet diameter rafts to the top floor. You got in and started down. The raft would go up the sides of the tube as though it were tipping over--Eleanor says it felt as though you might fall out. Sometimes you were on the inside of the building and sometimes you were on the outside. Michael and his sister took 5 kids: an 18 month old, 2 3 year olds and 2 6 year olds. I think they went down about 8 times. Amanda wasn't too sure she wanted to go down at first, but after the first ride when we were standing around deciding what to do, she started walking up the stairs all by herself. She was ready to go down all by herself, if necessary.

Luke enjoyed tubing around the perimeter on the "Lazy river". He enjoyed it so much that after lunch he managed to fall asleep in Daddy's arms. I don't know how many times they went around, but Luke probably slept for 45 minutes on the water. There were a few traditional water slides in the center part of the park, and he enjoyed those thoroughly, although he preferred the light ones to the dark ones. He would giggle as we went down the slide. I think he enjoyed himself more than I did.

Also in the middle of the park was a huge bucket way up at the top of the structure, which would fill up with water and then about every 2 minutes would pour it down on everyone. Some of the teenagers at the park seemed to like this, but Amanda and Luke were pretty scared.

We arrived home (after dinner in Woodbury) at about 9. Amanda was asleep. Eleanor was asleep. Luke... was awake.

Comments

C. L. Hanson said…
You're talking about the park that's right by the Mall of America, right? What's up? I got an email saying you wouldn't be in Minnesota. If you're free, we're right around the corner at the moment. We're also planning a trip to Madison, so we could potentially get together there if that's where your vacation is centered. Please email me if you're interested -- it would be great to see you again! :D
mathmom said…
Hi Chanson---we were there for 1 day, but we were based in Menomonie (i.e., we came for the day (left home at 8:30), went to dinner in Woodbury and to Wisconsin for bed). We just couldn't get back to see you all =( It's frustrating how near and yet how far you were from us. If you're back next year, we'll definitely try to coordinate better.

Popular posts from this blog

Things that are true

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.

Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown. I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!

A day at the fair

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...