Summer Adventure #2- Discovery Kingdom

 So for our very latest Summer Adventure, we went to 6 Flags Discovery Kingdom, aka Marine World. We had a grand old time, although we faced a few of obstacles in getting there!

 Our first obstacle occurred after we drove the approximately 3 hours, and had arrived at the park!  There had been a mix up, and rather than buying Discovery Kingdom tickets, we had indeed purchased Great America (another amusement park in California) tickets.  Problem.  Well, now we have 7 Great America tickets, and 7 Discovery Kingdom passes that are valid through September!  Looks like we will be back.

Well, we got into the park and  began to ride all of the rides.  We started with the biggest roller coasters and then went on to some of the tame, less jarring ones.  

 One of our family's favorite rides are the swings.

 Traditionally we go on the swings after especially wet water rides.

 We call the swings our "drying cycle"

 As you can see, we all had a grand time!  Also, for the first time in Houghton history, we stuck together the entire day because EVERYONE was brave enough (and tall enough) to go on all the rides (although, admittedly, Tess did sit out on a couple of the scariest looking rides- she was our faithful bag-holder instead)

 One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the dolphins perform :)  Afterwards, we couldn't help but notice, the trainers throw a bunch of balls in the pool, and the dolphins commenced with a game of what looked suspiciously like Water Polo... (At least that's what Dad thinks)

 For the record, Eliza claims to have suffered multiple minor-concussions throughout the day.  I guess the roller coasters were a little bumpy...

Following the leader, the leader, the leader, we're following the leader (doo, doo, doo, doo, de, dum)

 Despite the sting ray's evasive maneuvers, Eliza's long arms did eventually reach him...

 The other show we went to was Shouka the killer whale's!  Killer whales (orcas) are pretty much awesome by the way.  

 Shouka didn't disappoint.

 Eliza and I were talking and we decided, only humans could come up with a concept like this.  Someone must have said: "I have a great idea!  Let's take a lot of money and build these giant machines that simulate the final moments of vehicles before they crash, and let's make them perfectly safe.  Then people will come and pay hundreds of dollars to be thrown around by these machines and get adrenaline rushes!!"  

Well, I like  it.

 As the park closed we had a race on our killer whales.  Tess knew I was going to win from the very start, you can tell by the look on her face :)

 By the end we were all very tired, so we headed back to the magical school bus (cough), oh I mean Babe- the big blue ox.

We stopped to "feed the machines" on the way home, at Levi's very favorite place to eat!

And eventually we made it home, tired, but well-fed and happy after another awesome adventure!

Other News:

• My neck hurts- a lot.  There's something wrong with it.
• Eliza's house-sitting
• Summer homework continues for Tess and Marta.
• Much needed house cleaning is commencing- our latest list includes window cleaning and re-staining the porch railings.
• Life goes on.

A note on the whole summer adventure thing:  When we were at conference this last weekend, Elder Ballard counselled us to "make memories" with our families.  I guess, this is our way of doing that.

Love,

Marta