Valley Fair.

For the last several years we've gone to Adventureland on Memorial Day Weekend.  They allow Veterans to come free of charge and allow them to purchase tickets at a discounted rate for friends and family coming along.  We had planned to do that this year too but there were storms coming to Des Moines so at the last minute we changed plans and decided to head to Valley Fair near Minneapolis instead.  This year we also decided to bring along some friends and employees.  I wasn't exactly sure how it'd go renting a 12 passenger van and going with 5 kids 6 and under, 3 high school kids, a college kid and 4 adults, but we had a FABULOUS day that really couldn't have gone any better.  

Here we are our family of 5 excited to start an exciting day!  (Titus fell asleep about 15 minutes before we were going to arrive and we got him to stay asleep in the stroller for about 15 minutes into the park)

And here's a picture of the whole crew!  Chad, Erica, Nick, me, Derek, Jessica, Mark, Natalie, Caleb, Elise, Titus, Isaiah and Levi!

We were all so excited for all the big rides and the weather looked a little questionable when we got there so we decided to go on one of the bigger rides in case it rained and they shut it down - one HUGE perk of going with lots of big kids and adults -- there's always someone willing to stay back with the kids.  Here is a before and after of our first ride.

Our second stop was the Snoopy area which had tons of rides for kids.  I'm pretty sure this was the favorite ride in this area - I wouldn't be exaggerating when I say that Levi rode it over and over and over at least 8 times in a row - often with a new partner.  I'm pretty sure his favorite time around was when he was next to Jessie - Levi's first crush :)  (she's the top right picture)

The rest of the day was spent on just about all the rides they had to offer -- we spent a lot of time in the kids area.  There were lots of rides that we could all go on, including Titus.  I love the pure joy that you can see on so many faces in these pictures. 

One of the favorite parts of the day for everyone was the time we spent in the ball room - it was basically a room with tons of balls that you could shoot all over the place and at each other - we've never been anywhere like it before - wow!  I think we could have been here all day. 

Like I said before, it was a really, really fun day.  I'm so glad that we got to spend our annual theme park weekend with lots of friends!

And the car ride there really wasn't so bad - the kids were so excited...and the car ride home, just about everyone was asleep!  

After this day, I'm wondering if we will make Valley Fair our Memorial Day tradition -- they offered free entrance for Veterans too and their online ticket prices were basically the same as Adventureland.