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- We celebrated Abby’s birthday this week!! Our sweet pup turned 13 years old (how is that possible?) She’s getting greyer and not running around quite as much as she used to, but if you break out her frisbee or take her to the lake – she turns into a puppy again. We love her to pieces.
- Since Derrick had a long weekend last weekend (thanks to the 4th of July falling on a Tuesday) and I had the weekend off from my string of summer weddings, we traveled down to Busch Gardens Williamsburg for a nice long relaxing weekend. Of course, it ended up being one of the hottest weekends on record – with temps reaching up into the mid-90’s every day, and the “real feel” topping out around 114º. It was hot. Since we already spent time at Busch Gardens Williamsburg this year (we were there back in the spring), we were truly only visiting for one reason: their brand new, indoor roller coaster: DarKoaster. We missed riding it by just a few days when we were in Virginia in the spring, and since Busch Gardens isn’t that far of a drive, we knew we would make another trip out this summer.
We broke up our days by spending time in the park and spending lots of time at the hotel pool. In fact, I think over the 4-days/3-nights we were in Virginia, we spent around 12 hours in the pool (no joke). We specifically booked our hotel for their pool area (the pool was both indoor and outdoor – so it was quite large) – and with the extreme heat, we ended up being so thankful that we did! The kids had a BLAST and Derrick and I spent more time just relaxing and talking while sitting in/around the pool than we have in a very long time.
We did get on DarKoaster – it was interesting. It’s definitely a fun ride (but not worth the 90-minute wait it routinely had every day we were there). We rope-dropped the ride (meaning, we were at the park before it opened and we went straight to that ride as soon as they opened the gates) – so we ended up only waiting about 20 minutes.
We really had low-expectations for the park on this trip – with it being the 4th of July, we assumed that the park would be crazy busy. As long as we got on DarKoaster, and we got the kids on their favorite rides, we were going to call it a success. While the park was busy, the lines were honestly not that long at all. We walked onto almost every other roller coaster (besides DarKoaster)! So, we ended up doing way more than we anticipated (including watching the fireworks on Sunday night – something we hadn’t expressly planned on doing).
On our way home, we stopped at Kings Dominion for a few hours. - After getting home – of course, we have spent a lot of time biking this week. It’s been quite hot here too though, so we’ve tried to keep the rides to a shorter timeframe.
The kids tried to get out our pool – but sadly it didn’t survive the winter. We blew it up, but only one of the three layers of the walls would hold air.
I told the kids: no worries – I got a new splash pad to play in! So I got that out, and within a matter of 3 minutes, Leander had popped it with a stick. (Needless to say, Braelynn was crushed.) - We put up string lights around our patio! I’ve slowly been collecting the things we needed to put them up and finally had everything. I tried to put them up by myself as a surprise for Derrick, but after about two hours of work, I realized that I just could not do it alone. I needed another adult, and I needed a taller adult. Thankfully, Derrick was a good sport and helped me as soon as he got home to finish putting them up – they look so cool!
We ate dinner out on the patio under the lights that night and the kids thought we were so fancy. - My string of summer weddings continues today! I can’t wait to celebrate with Dan and Amy today – check back later this week for their wedding blog!
