Oh for crying out loud

Some days are just a fiasco, from start to finish. Why did I even get out of bed? I start to wonder. (Probably the 4 year old screaming "I NEED JUICE" had something to do with it.)

Anyway. Sunday night I decide to take the kids to King's Dominion on Monday. Right away both the older kids want to bring a friend. Okay. Fine. Sure. 8 kids, me, the big white (12 passenger) van, on a 98 degree day with 50% humidity.

So we head out, hopeful and excited. We get about 20 minutes into the trip and are stopped in traffic. Not. Moving. At. All. A road that normally takes me 26 minutes (I timed it on the way home) took me over 2 and a half hours. The car overheated. The air conditioner stopped working, and I almost ran out of gas.

We finally get there, and head right for the water park section of the theme park. I manage to get 8 kids into their swim suits, sun block on, situated under and umbrella, towels out, drinks bought, life vests on, and we head over to the wave pool. The water, it should be noted, was as warm as a bath tub. So refreshing! We'd been in for about 5 minutes when the sky clouded up. Then we heard a big boom of thunder. I'm hustling the kids out of the water when i see Declan take off running. The thunder has scared him and he is heading to the shelter about 50 feet away from us.

I tell my 2 daughters to chase after him, gather the rest of my belongings and children, and join the chase. He's gone. We can't find him anywhere. At this point the rain is falling in sheets. Icy cold, painful sheets of pouring rain. All of stuff- our towels, our extra clothes, phones, everything- is getting soaked. I find a security person and they start a search. We're all looking around trying to find him. After about 5 or 10 minutes they tell me that he was taken to lost and found when he ran past a security guard alone. Wonderful news! However, lost and found is far, far away from where we were. In the part of the park where you aren't allowed to have swim suits on. And I have 7 soaked, cold, miserable kids in tow. And one soaked, scared baby alone at lost in found.

So, I figured they could just yell at me later, and trekked off across the park in my swim suit. SOme of the kids pulled their wet stuff on over their suits, some didn't. We finally got there, found the little guy and got changed, etc etc, and went on with our day. Within 15 minutes of the rain stopping the temperature went back up to 93 degrees with the humidity worse than ever.

We decided to do rides that were not in the water park, and moved on to roller coasters. Some of the kids (Devin and Regan especially) were trying some new things- the friends we'd brought along were a bit braver, and interested in bigger rides. We head to the shock wave. And standup roller coaster, that involves a big hill, a loop and a cork screw. A big deal for first timers!

The little kids and I are waiting at the exit of the ride. I am thinking that it is taking a really long time for them to come out. Then I realize that no one has come out for a while. And that the ride has been silent. So we walk around. And yep, there they are. Stuck. 40 some feet in the air. So, there we wait. About 15 minutes for them to get the ride going again, and get my children off of the ride safely. And the whole time I am thinking- what happens if they get it started again, and it breaks again, while they are still on it? But it didn't, and everything was fine, once they finally got off. No one was even very upset about it, thank goodness.

I'm kind of thinking I might not go back to King's dominion this summer. Or ever.