The World's Most Beautiful Theme Park

The kids all earned 200 points on their life skills/chore charts which earned them a trip to an amusement park. Busch Gardens-here we come! Well, here we came. We had an amazing day in Williamsburg lasting a full 12 hours at the park (thank you Alyson Fox for helping us make it!) and learned a lot about each of our kids.

The first ride of the day: the Battering Ram. It only made 3 of the 4 kids cry! Not a great way to start the day. For the rest of the day, anytime we saw or passed this ride Jesse would break down. Needless to say we will probably never be on this ride as a family again!

Josie was the most even keeled of all the kids. She would trot onto any ride with a smile on her face (besides the Battering Ram). She loved them all and was unbelievably content.

Asher is in the 3rd cart from the left, our roller coaster junky. He literally rode every single roller coaster there twice!! His smile was from ear to ear, loving every minute, screaming hoots of joy. Here Anna is on her first roller coaster with cousin Alyson, second cart from front. I was certain if I got her on one, she would fall in love. Well I was wrong. I thought we killed her. She was a mess and cried for almost 2 hours afterwards! The only reason she is waving in this picture is because it just started. I am not sure if she will ever try another coaster again.

Anna's favorite rides were the spinning tea cups and the giant swings, where she would close her eyes in complete joy, put her arms out, and pretend she was flying. She rode these 2 rides over and over and after her "near death" experience, I didn't try to persuade her to do anything else!

Jesse was kind of stuck in between...too small for the coasters, and felt he was too big for a lot of the kiddie rides.  It took us a while but we found some happy medium rides that made him smile. He loved flying the planes.

 and this was his favorite ride of the day, the "Roman Rapids".

They were soaked afterwards!

 And this was giant playground that we took turns watching the younger kids while the adults rode roller coasters with Asher. I only post a picture of where I think Jesse broke his left arm (while on my watch) even though we didn't have him in the ER till 2 days later when he fell off the ladder of his bunk bed. He was clutching his arm in the exact same spot as he was this day after a tumble from a net. It was a fun playground though.

If I am talking about his broken arm, I have to add the most adorable picture. We should have it casted in the next 2 days. He has been planning what color he is going to choose. He must have a high pain tolerance to have lived with it for 2 days but you can't convince me it didn't happen at Busch Gardens because I am certain! I almost left the park with him that day but thought I was being the overreactive mother. 

We left the park at 10pm, got our kids in bed at the hotel by 10:45, climbed into bed and were asleep ourselves around 11:30...only to be woken up by the fire alarms in our rooms at midnight! Craziness! No fire, just some freak thing they every kid slept through while us 3 adults stumbled around trying to makes sense of what was happening. The next day we went to Colonial Williamsburg for the afternoon...not as exciting as Busch Gardens but we managed to have a good time together. The kids enjoyed locking Joel and I up.