The Tightwad Goes to an Amusement Park

The music has temporarily changed in honor of this post or shall I say because of the stroller? When we were there we heard so many comments about it, I stopped counting after about 30 people said "Wow, that's cool" or " Aww that's so adorable". I also heard lots of the typical comments: "you have your hands full, oh look triplets, a blonde-brunette-and a redhead!, are they twins, they aren't triplets are they-but that one is smaller etc..." so all in all the day was wonderful only 1 crappy "oh, I'd kill myself" and the rest was all positive.

We didn't get loaded up and ready to go until almost lunch time but I had planned it that way so we could eat our picnic lunch before we entered the park. Full kids=less whining for overpriced junk foods and drinks. We parked as far away from the other cars as possible so I wasn't worrying about them darting out in front of cars or a freak picking them up and taking them away. We were a good 100ft from the nearest car and there was a nice strip of grass and a big bush for shade. I brought the large cooler filled with foods I had cooked up the night before, I made 2 meals at supper time so we would have food to take. I made home made chicken nuggets from chicken breast, we like them dipped in egg and then cracker crumbs. They were yummy cold. We also had some very plain pasta salad, I left it a little on the dry side (to cut down on the messy hands of toddlers) and added some diced ham and that's about it, the pasta was little wagon wheels so the girls could fork them really easily. A big bowl of grapes and some of the meatloaf from the night before, and a big bowl of jello salad with oranges. Everyone ate the lunch and got full while we set up the strollers and Mommy packed up the diaper bag and filled sippies. We took crackers and dry cereal into the park as well as bottled water.

We had discussed the rides, looked online at them and we all knew our way around so each of the boys picked a couple rides that they really wanted to ride, we did those first so that if things went south we could make a run for it and still be ok with heading home. We managed to get in all the rides and let the girls ride some kiddy rides, we watched the Circus (kinda lame this year) and the kids all did wonderful. The girls ran around but stayed close to us and the area by the Raging River ride was nice and shady and they couldn't go too far. When it was time to get back in the stroller and move on they did it without fussing as long as we were moving. Piper spotted a seeing eye dog and spent a lot of time petting it and she also made friends with a little girl and a lady working at the tee shirt stand. We played no games-we bought nothing but a small bag of chips and a slush, 1 slush for Levi. The train ride that we went on is set up by a master mind. To get off the train and exit the ride you must go through a candy store! Guess what? Bizzarro Supermom just happened to have non-sticky sweet tart suckers in the diaper bag for everyone! They cost me a quarter on sale at the grocery store and I didn't have to hear anybody whine about not getting to buy that overpriced candy that we were forced to walk by. * (A side note here: Logan is 5 years old and just learned how to use a gumball machine at the store if that tells you anything about how I feel about my kids spending money on junk/trinkets and candy.)

After the park we stopped off at Hobby Lobby for a quick supply run and we ate at a buffet restaurant. The girls got more food on the table than in their tummies and the waitress gave us 4 helium balloons to take home. The van was packed full anyway but the added bonus of 4 balloons being squeezed and swatted made the trip home extra special. After 30 min.. Our trip home was just under 2 hours and we arrived home around 10pm, changed sleeping kids into pajamas and put them to bed. It was lots of fun for all of us.