A Trip to Lagoon

We were able to cross another thing off of our bucket list for this summer: Lagoon. It is an amusement park about 20 minutes north of Salt Lake City. It's pretty small if you're used to Disneyland and Magic Mountain. But it still can help if you've got a roller coaster love you need to fill. Mark and I never managed to get any photos together that day. But at least we got some of each other.
Originally, my sister Shelene had asked me to go to help her as she was surprising her 2 older kids with some mom time. Mark started his summer classes this week and so we thought it would be a perfect way to spend my day off since he wouldn't be home until 7 or 8. Well, his class for Wednesday ended up being cancelled. So at the last minute, he asked his awesome boss for the day off and he said okay! Driving up, we were teasing the kids and asking them where they thought we were going. They had all sorts of ideas, but since they had never been to Lagoon, it didn't even cross their minds. At one point, "Uncle Mark" told them he was pretty sure they were going to Red Lobster. I think the kids actually believed him for a bit. Our mystery conversation that went right over the kids' heads went like this: (keep in mind Red Lobster=Lagoon)
Shelene: Mark have you ever been to red lobster?
Mark: No I have not.
Shelene: Do you like...big lobsters?
Mark: Not really. They are kind of scary. I prefer smaller lobsters.
We were dying of laughter. The kids however looked really confused.

Once we go there though, the kids were excited. My nephew Spencer isn't the bravest kid, so we had to push him to go on a few of the rides. One of my favorite moments with him from the day was on a kiddie coaster as he yelled "this is the best ride ever!!!!" We got him to go on all of the rides with us by telling him it was okay to scream. The funny thing was that he would start screaming as soon as the ride took off....well I guess he screamed when he was scared which was what we told him to do.

The first ride we chose to start off was the carousel. Alexis and Spencer picked giraffes and chickens. Sadly, they didn't know that those animals didn't move up and down as we went around like the horses did. I think they still liked the novelty. We went on a few rides before lunch, slowly working up to the bigger coasters.

After lunch we decided to hit the water rides. We did a ride that is similar to "Log Jammer" at Magic Mountain. You sit in this hollow log, go down a "stream" and then at the end you go down a huge hill. If you're imagining all 5 of us in a log getting soaked, that's exactly what happened. Apparently we weren't wet enough because then we headed for Rattlesnake Rapids.

 This is us waiting in line and seeing the big waterfall we ultimately knew some of us would get stuck under. Oh boy! It was certainly an adventure!

This was us after the rides. We don't look wet, but the dry patch on my shirt shows just how wet we were. We might as well have gone swimming practically! But we had a blast laughing and the kids thought it was funny walking around soaking wet.

When we were about 90% dry, Shelene found a water slide/raft ride for us to try. Of course no one she saw come down had gotten very wet. Our first time down, the back of my pants got wet. Unfortunately, Shelene and Alexis' 2nd time down wasn't so fortunate. They got hit by a wave of water while in the tunnel and once again, their clothes were soaked. We still had a handful of rides we wanted to go on. So we dried off on spinning rides like the tilt-a-wheel. (Uncle Mark took pictures since he's not a big fan of spinning rides)

While riding a "ski lift", Mark discovered on the other end of the park was a race car track. When we got off, he checked it out. Unfortunately Alexis and Spencer were too small to drive. I figured that was the end of that idea. But the next thing I know, he bought passes for me to drive with Alexis and him with Spencer. Shelene stood on the sidelines and took some pictures with her camera. Even though the kids couldn't drive themselves, Alexis loved it and Mark said Spencer giggled the whole time. Especially since they "beat us". But come on, everyone knows those tracks were not made for passing other cars. I would have won if there was more room to pass (...okay may be not really). 

We had a great day. Since it as Wednesday, the lines were hardly existant which is probably why we actually went on a few rides twice. We were all pretty exhausted by the time we headed for the parking lot. The kids had been so well-behaved all day. It was fun to spend some time with just them and their Mom without their little sisters around. Thanks Shelene for sharing your kids and a fun adventure with us!