Lagoon (Late)

We drive by Lagoon on the freeway pretty frequently. For the past few months, every time we drove by that big Ferris wheel, Arden would ask about when I would take her there. Arden had never been to Lagoon before since Dax and then Cora were too little in the past few summers. Actually, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have been to Lagoon since the day I quit working there (I worked as a lifeguard at Lagoon A Beach during high school). One day in the spring, we drove by Lagoon again and Arden asked: "Mo-oooom? Are we eevvvvver going to go there and ride on the Ferris wheel and roller coasters? ***sigh***"

I thought back to when I was little and how I thought that Lagoon was the funnest place EV-ER. Feeling a twinge of guilt, I said something like, "maybe we could go to Lagoon sometime this summer." Arden took that to mean, "We will most certainly go to Lagoon as soon as it is summer." I kept putting it off and putting it off until summer really was almost over. But, true to my near-promise a couple of weeks ago, we made our First (probably) Annual Zaugg trip to Lagoon.

After handing over the cash, (luckily we had coupons, but it still hurt), we headed to the good old carousel. Dax wanted to ride the zebra:
Cora chose a black horse, and Preston rode next to her. Arden somehow ended up on a vampire pig (seriously, check out those teeth):

After that we headed to the little kiddie rides and rode them ALL. I was surprised at how many of the rides I remembered riding on as a little kid were still there. For example, this used to be my favorite ride:

Look out, aliens! Well, really, look out Arden, cause Cora is really excited to shoot you. She kept yelling "I shoot Ahdin! I shoot Ahdin!"

There were a bunch of new rides too. Cora rode this ride with me, though she didn't enjoy herself much the first time because she was VERY concerned about the dolphins and whales that spit water. Luckily, I am an excellent fish-driver and we stayed pretty dry.

Preston, on the other hand, let Dax drive and got spit on by a whale every time around.

We met up with some season-pass holding cousins part way through the day. Cora LOVES her older cousin, Hailey. Can you see how excited she is to be riding with her on the plane? Hailey looks a little less excited. Right before this picture was taken she was informed that she is too tall and this would be her final ride on the kiddie rides. Poor Hailey.

My dad came up to help wrestle kids and we took him on the train ride. Here are the weirdos we had to face all during the trip:

Lagoon has quite a few impressive animals this year. They had some Siberian tigers, and four white tigers. They had a couple of lions too. Hogle Zoo doesn't even have lions! How does Lagoon have lions when the zoo doesn't??

Arden was a little afraid to go on the roller coasters...until her cousins wanted to go on one. Then she was suddenly over her fears. Ah, the joys of peer pressure. While everyone else rode the new Bombora coaster (even Dax was tall enough for that one), Cora and I headed over to an equally thrilling ride...Bulgy the Whale:

Whoo! Right about this time my camera's batteries ran out, but we stayed ALL DAY.

After she got going, Arden was very brave. She rode Bombora a few times, and even rode the Bat. The Bat is one of those roller coasters where your feet hang free, and she was very concerned about losing her flip-flops, but she came through with her footwear intact. Turns out she is about an inch too short for any of the other big roller coasters.

We rode the carousel a few more times, and rode the big Ferris wheel. We also rode the sky ride and the log flume. We had ice cream in Pioneer Village (along with every other person in the park), and everyone but Cora and I went on Rattlesnake Rapids. I think my dad suggested this ride hoping that it would get Dax wet enough that it would wash the ice cream off of him and make him less sticky. Dax got SOAKED, and he was a lot less sticky...but his teeth started chattering after a while. I wrung out his shirt and luckily had some "just in case" shorts in my bag that he was able to change into to stop his teeth from chattering.

After a few more little kid rides and one last ride on Bombora (Arden and Dax's favorite ride), it was 8:00 p.m. and time to head home and go to bed. Considering that we were there for about nine straight hours, the kids did amazingly well and we all had a great time! I will start saving my pennies for next year.