Day 3 - Six Flags

Monday started early for the boys.  They're back to getting up at the crack of dawn while we're in San Jose, so at 6:30am they rolled out of bed and Grandma took them to breakfast down the street.  They got back soon after Boris and I started moving forward on the day.

We had to pack up and transfer car seats around to get ready for the drive to Six Flags.  When we originally planned for San Jose, we were going to just stop at Six Flags on the way down instead of making a whole drive of it.  But in the end, we decided it was more worthwhile to get to San Jose a couple days early and then do Six Flags in between.  The 90 minute drive wasn't too bad; although, the boys were not totally happy about it.

We got to the park just after they opened at 10:30am.  Michelle and Chris caravanned up with us and even though the started out going a different direction from us (and turned around when they hit traffic), they still ended up right behind us for the last few miles of the drive.  Michelle says I drive much slower than her.

Even with the early wake-up, the boys started out with lots of energy.  It's quite a hike from the parking lot to the park entrance and even when Grady was walking slow, he totally refused to let me pick him up for a little while.  It was pretty cold and cloudy to start out, so we were all wrapped in our towels for a good portion of the day.

We were going to hike to the far end of the park where there was a large kiddie section and then slowly make our way back.  There was one spinner ride that we tried out as we walked.  The boys laughed the whole time and said "woah" every time we spun.  I was glad we did that one before we ate.  Peter was also able to go on one of the swing-style rides and Grady was pretty upset that he wasn't quite tall enough for it.

When we got to the end of the park, we found out the big kiddie section didn't open until noon.  As we figured out where else to go first, we decided we were hungry and there was only 15 more minutes until noon.  We ate Johnny Rockets for an insane amount of money and then everything was open for our riding pleasure.

The boys were a little iffy on trying out some of the rides.  I think they looked a little boring more so than scary.  I'm pretty sure the boys eventually went on every ride in that section.  Michelle and Chris went off to ride a few of the bigger coasters and we wandered around with the boys finding cool stuff to ride.  We saw some giraffes and elephants, tigers and snakes.  We missed out on the shows again which was just as well because Grady was convinced that he did NOT want to see a show with dolphins.  (I'm really not sure why.)

Even with the cold, the boys played in some of the sprinkler fountains.  Before we left, we all decided to get wet on the White Water Safari (rapids) ride.  I wasn't sure how the boys would do on it, with all the wet and everything.  But they seem to have loved it.  Grady got pretty soaked from going straight under the waterfall.  I think he was a little shocked by it, but afterwards he kept talking about how fun it was.  His way of saying it was "my favorite part was the waterfall where my socks got wet".  There was lots of laughter during the ride.

And what kind of adventure would be complete without letting the boys check out the gift shop.  They've been excited to save up their money for the various gift shops on our vacation.  This one was special because Six Flags has lots of Superman and Batman memorabilia.  Surprisingly, there wasn't as much there as the last time we visited, but the boys still found a little treasure to spend their money on.

We went home happy and very tired.  Grady conked out in the first few minutes of driving.  Peter still can't really sleep in the car and asked many times "how long until we get back to Grandma's house".  Once we got back, he said that he had a headache for most of our driving time.

Sadly, all of that activity didn't translate into sleeping in the next day.  The boys were still up by 6:30am or 7am.  Somewhat cranky from still being tired, but I was surprised how well they managed the almost full day at the park.  I'm starting to think something like Disneyland isn't too far outside the realm of possibility.