Gavin and Declan: Summer Break

Another blog entry devoted to a single excursion, this time its Santa's Village. Santa's Village is, in their words, an Azoosement park. Basically, its an amusement parks geared towards little kids, with rides similar to those you see at a carnival or county fair. There are some more intricate rides as well, but its mainly cars/planes/boats/animals that go around in a circle and sometimes up and down, cars on a track, trains on a track, a roller coaster, a carousel, pony rides, you get the idea. There are also animal exhibits throughout the park, including a petting zoo. And of course, there is Santa's "summer" house, where you can visit Santa in the off season.

My parents took me here when I was little (although I think its changed quite a bit since I was a kid), so I wanted to take Gav and Dec here to check it out. I'm glad we did because the boys had a great time and we will definitely go back. I firmly believe in the correlation between the length of Gavin's nap and the amount of fun he had, and he took a 4 hr nap after visiting Santa's Village, so I would say it was a definite success!

Here are our pics from Santa's Village:

Our second ride of the day, the speedboats. All four of us (me, Dec, Gav and Grandpa) rode on the carousel first, but I didn't get any pics of that. Dec loved the carousel, even though we had to stick to the lame benches :)

Grandpa and Declan enjoying the day.

Self pic of Gav and I waiting for the hot air balloon ride to start. Gavin loved this ride, which goes up pretty high, and swings around pretty fast. Mommy and her dislike of spinny rides did not like this ride so much. I spent the entire time looking at the floor of the basket praying that I would not be the mom that lost her cookies on a kiddie ride!

Gav and Grandpa riding the monster truck train ride (and that devil balloon ride in the background!)

Any ride that involves pretend driving is a hit with the Gavster.

Self pic of Gav and I on the plane ride.

Dec enjoying some time in the shade while we took a break for lunch.

Gavin driving the car with Grandpa working the gas.

This was always one of my favorites as a kid...

...and its clearly a Gavin favorite as well. Look at those smiles from both of the boys!

I've taught Gavin not to pet animals near their heads, but apparently I should have also told him that butts are off limits too!

Hard to capture in a still pic, but Gavin was doing a "goat happy dance" as he called it.

I remember this from when I was a kid as well. Its just a 2 story slide, but it is always a big hit with the kids. The minute Gavin caught sight of this he leaped out of the stroller and said "I go on this" and didn't wait for approval before climbing up the stairs.