Lost Island and Adventureland

Time to wrap up our Iowa posts before more summer fun is upon us.
Just a couple of the fun Destinations that Iowa had to offer us this year.
We spent a day at Lost Island water park in Waterloo. The kids loved it. My kids are pretty big fans of water slides and wave pools etc, so they didn't have much to complain about. Especially with so many cousins and aunt and uncle and even Grandma and Grandpa, who were all willing to take them on a slide or water coaster, or just for a spin on the lazy river.

Mallory, Henry and Claire spent quite a bit of time on the Lazy River with anyone who would go with them. Henry kept trying to convince Mallory to go down a few small water slides with him, but she was not having any of it. Finally he kept saying, "I don't know why Mallory loves the lazy river so much, but she really does."

Gavin and Macy floating along.

Even the babies had some good water fun, the other two took naps on the chairs by the pool, but not Wyatt. The little bit of sleep he allowed himself to get was only in my arms. He did discover how much fun it is to splash though.

Jade is already a beach babe.

The day after the water park we headed to Des Moines to Adventureland. There were a lot of things that I had forgotten about Adventureland from high school, and having kids helped us to find all of the rides that we would have never even looked at as youth. We definitely tried to pack a lot into the day and hit a wide variety of rides.
A nice spin on the carousel, got us all ready to go.

Gavin insisted everyone had to ride this thing called "G Force". Though this had nothing to do with talking Guinea pigs.After only a short time at the park Henry became obsessed with the idea of riding the bumper cars. It even reached a point where he was sitting alone on a bench yelling, "Mom, I Want to do the bumper cars, RIGHT NOW." It was certainly an awesome moment in parenting. But eventually we made it to the bumper cars and everyone had a good time driving around crashing each other.

Grandma's favorite rides are the Teacups...

(not as fun as I had hoped, turns out you can't use that wheel in the middle of the cup to make it turn faster, like the hamburgers on McDonald's playgrounds back in the day)...And the Scrambler. No one got too sick on it either.We were all wearing down part way through the day and Libbie was able to hitch a ride. It's good to still be able to fit in your Mom's stroller when you are almost 10.Just a little video of the baby boys at the end of the day. They were so tired, but still managing to be cute and mostly happy.