Tuesday, August 18, 2009

If Heather and Jayme can do it …

… then hell, so can I.

Hello, my name is Deirdre, and I'm a bad blogger.

If you care to hear them, I have excuses aplenty for my absence, but something tells me you'd rather just hear the fun stuff about what we've been up to lately. Here goes my first installment: The kids' first trip to an amusement park.



Just five blocks from our house is an impossibly old and dilapidated amusement park that is just dying to have a novel written about it. Entry is $2.50, and approximately zero percent of that goes to upkeep. When you ride the 74-year-old roller coaster, you're vividly, violently reminded of the difference between the thrill of perceived danger (the kind you get on those multimillion-dollar, safety engineer–vetted Six Flags coasters) and the terror of actual danger (like you get when you see workers picking up pieces of cracked white lumber beneath the coaster you're on, and tossing them back over the fence, presumably so they can be staple-gunned back on later that afternoon).

Still, they have a fantastic kiddie ride section (and did I mention that $2.50 gets you in? And that I'm cheap?), so Greg and I took the kids over there a couple weeks ago on a rainy Saturday afternoon for an experiment in adventure. Sidamo usually isn't the most adventurous of kids, so we weren't sure how it would go. Turns out we needn't have worried—he was in heaven. He went on every single ride, including the kiddie roller coaster (a slightly less harrowing version of the crumbling lumber ride), and begged for more. Something tells me we're going to need to start saving our quarters for repeat trips. And once Nora is old enough to join in the fun? Well, I guess we'll have to make those fifty-cent pieces.











And now, just to show you how committed I am to my blogging rebirth, here it is again, video-montage style.

4 comments:

jayme said...

Welcome back!

I gotta say, I totally love those old school amusement park rides for their aesthetics. But although I never thought I'd be the type to fear a ride, I'm definitely starting to feel more cautious about amusement parks these days. Guess I'm getting old...

cathy said...

great updates!!!! please keep 'em coming. i've missed you.

whatever_heather said...

I'm so glad we're back. I've missed you guys so much.
The park looks awesomely well...thrilling!

Sam said...

That makes me tempted to go on the kitty ride section, but since I am in Madison, Wisconsin, that may be hard