Vacation part 3, King's Dominion

After probably overstaying our welcome in D.C., we went to stay at my friend, Nichole's house. They live outside Richmond, VA. They also have a dog that the boys fell in love with. There were 2 cats that they found intriguing, but not nearly as much fun as the dog! It was wonderful to finally see where Nichole lived and get to know her family a little better. They have a kinda mother-in-law suite on their top floor. I doubt it was originally designed (by Nichole's handy husband, Terry) for a family of five, but we actually fit quite nicely up there and were very comfortable! In fact, I've often daydreamed since then of moving in there myself...just need to run it by Nichole...

Anyway, we spent a whole day at a place called King's Dominion. It is an amusement/theme park and also a water park. They advertise that you get 2 parks for the price of 1! I was skeptical, but it indeed, was like two great parks for one price. It was a really nice place and the kids had a blast.

The only drawback was that, of course, we had to split up. Peter would only ride things in the kiddie area and Sam wants to ride EVERYTHING and Caleb is in-between. He doesn't want to ride the kid stuff but isn't quite ready to ride all the big stuff. I am so amazed at Sam. He isn't afraid to ride anything. He even rode, by himself, things that Dave and I were too chicken to go on! He went on something called TombRaider, I think, and I was screaming just watching him ride it. Before it started, I even badgered the attendant to "please go double check that kid in the tie-dye shirt and make sure he's buckled in real good"...as Sam rolled his eyes at me. Hey, I read the news. I know what terrible things can go wrong on those rides...(!)

Anyhoo, it was a really fun day. I don't have many pictures and when we split up, I was with Peter most of the time so most all the pictures are of him! Here's the web album if you want to see it; just make sure you check out the picture of Peter on the swinging boat ride. He was really nervous about this ride but I talked him into going on it and I snapped a picture as he was waiting for it to start:

King's Dominion Aug.2007