Sunday

Saturday is usually preferred as the busy day of the weekend while Sunday is usually a little more laid back. Since the Summer began, our weekends have become a bit off. Saturday mornings have been reserved for Ben’s swimming lessons and by the time they are over it is lunch and then nap time for Mikaela, and, well, the day might as well be shot at that point. I should mention that we have to drive 45 minutes to get Ben to his lessons because my wonderful county is under the impression that all women stay at home with their children and therefore they only offer lessons Monday-Friday from 9 until 11. (I salute them with a giant middle finger!) So Sunday has become our busy day, which totally doesn’t work since we are back at work the following day.

On Saturday night we decide that we are going to surprise Ben and take him to Six Flags on Sunday. We don’t plan on telling him a thing until we pull into the parking lot, knowing that once he sees the sign, he will know right away. I mean, I’ve only heard about it every time a commercial comes on or we get a cup from McDonald’s, you know, the awesome buy one ticket, get one free cups? Anyway, we got up early and had breakfast, got everything packed up to entertain Mikaela, who we know will unfortunately be stuck in a car seat or stroller 95% of the day :( and head out the door. Oh, and we grabbed our awesome cup too! As we are driving we noticed that the sky is not looking favorable for our plans. Remaining optimistic, Matt and I trudge forward toward the park despite the radar which shows blobs of red, yellow, and green all around where we are headed. Bummer. We discussed a back up plan, just incase, but honestly, we had a very small window to take Ben and Sunday was it! We then resorted to fooling ourselves by saying that the weather might just pass over and it would be the perfect day to go since no one in their right mind would want to go to an amusement park on a day like today. We even go as far to suggest that we might be the only people there and will have the place to ourselves, with exception of a few other crazy people. As we arrive, with Ben bouncing happily around in his seat, we can hear thunder in the distance. As we are paying $15 to park (ouch), we are warned that there are no refunds if the park closes due to the weather. Great. Taking this little adventure is stretching our budget as it is, so now we were forced to face reality. I’m not willing to bank my whole day’s fate on the word of the parking woman, so we walked up to the gates to see if we could get better information from someone more official looking. It started to rain so I placed Mikaela’s rain cover on the stroller and watched while Matt talked to woman in a peach Six Flags button down shirt and a walkie-talkie. That’s about as official as they get. Meanwhile, behind them, lightning rips across the sky and then, it poured.

Matt checked the radar again and there we were buried under a red and yellow blob, and it seemed that there was no end in sight. We then had to break the news to Ben. Oh, the heartache. At this point I am thinking, damn, we are horrible parents!! We promised him we’d bring him back before school started and told him that we were going to go to our back up plan, which we assured him would be fun and he could get an ice cream after lunch. That seemed to do the trick. We ran back to the car in the downpour and managed to keep at least our underwear dry. Mikaela lucked out though, she only had a wet sock.

So now that I’ve managed to drag out the very first part of my story, I’ll tighten it up a bit. Before I do though, I have to mention that after we left the park, we stopped off to use the bathroom. There in the parking lot (witnessed by my husband) was the most God awful sight I have ever seen. A woman wearing the smallest shorts EVER! I have no clue how she got them on. It would be the equivalent of me trying to wear Mikaela’s shorts. I am not exaggerating. I am scared for life.

Ok, back to my long ass story. Our back-up plan was National Harbor. My brother worked on the building and we thought we would check it out. Unless you have a lot of money, it’s not a good place for you or your kids. It was very nice though. Maybe one day I’ll go back and window shop :) Disappointed yet again, we decided that since we were so close, we would head over to Alexandria, get some lunch and walk around a bit. We had a nice lunch and then decided that we should re-assess the situation. It looked like the weather had finally broken. It was still quite cloudy, but it didn’t look like the world was coming to an end like it did earlier. Yep, you guessed it, we headed back to Six Flags! If someone had told me that this was how my day was going to end up, I would have laughed at them. But it turned out to be the perfect day. The sun came out. There were no lines. Ben had a ball. We learned that he screams like a girl. Matt and I took turns riding with him on the bigger rides. I got stuck on water ride detail and the two of us ended up getting soaked. Not a dry place on my clothes, underwear, nada! It made lasting memories though. I was doing great until we came upon a water slide that had a huge raft and was made for anyone to ride (in non-bathing suit apparel). It looked like it would go down quickly but nothing crazy. How wrong I was. The damn thing spun the entire way down. Not a slow spin, but one of those fast spins that glued you to the sides. I honestly thought Ben was going to fly out and was surprised that my clothes weren’t completely dry by the time we reached to bottom. When the ride finally ended, I could not see straight. I had the worst case of spins ever. I am dizzy just thinking about it. I thought to myself, I am never going to be able to get out of this thing. I could see Ben dragging me all the way to where Matt and Mikaela were waiting as I threw up uncontrollably. Nice visual, huh? Never again my friends. Never again. I recovered quickly though and Matt and I took turns riding the Superman roller coaster, which was flippin’ awesome! Ben road all the rides in the kid park one more time and we headed home.

For a day of uncertainty, it ended up being a perfect day. I wouldn’t have changed a thing, except for the raft of nausea.