Rise and Shine, Birthday Boy!

What a spectacular start to Malcolm's birthday! Through some fortuitous collision of happy events, his birthday coincided with an offering of free rides at our amusement park. These rides were only free in the hours before the school day started, but how could we resist? So we retired early last night (well, most of us did). We rolled out of bed early, half of us got dressed (it's Pajama Day at school for Maren, and Malcolm thought he should participate, too), and made our way to the Mealey-Mobile.

Sooooo worth it! The kids were so excited by all those stop-and-start, round-and-round, up-and-down rides. Maren was excited to ride the roller coaster for the first time... she loved the speed and the turns, but closed her eyes through the tunnel, which was "kind of spooky." I discovered that my days of riding triple-loop roller coasters eleven times in a row are definitely over. I was embarassingly dizzy from the airplane kiddie ride. And that roller coaster that I yawned through when we first moved to the east coast has become thrilling in the years since I last rode it.