Our Crazy Spontaneous Monday

Hannah on the Carousel with Daddy

I apologize for going AWOL on you all today. Typically Monday is one of my busiest blog days, but obviously today that didn’t happen. Here’s the story of what happened today.

I got all my posts scheduled for today through noon, and since Brad was home and we both didn’t have too much else to do, so we thought, wow a free day, let’s take the kiddos up to Hershey Chocolate World. It’s a bit of a hike for us, but it’s FREE for the kids to go on the tour (it shows how they make Hershey Chocolate), and they have free parking too for a few hours. So we thought we’d run up there and have a little “family date”.

Well, we parked and got to the front entrance, and were suddenly accosted by these sweet people holding a handful of tickets. They asked us if we were going into Hersheypark (HUGE theme park). We said we weren’t, just Chocolate World for the free ride, so they asked, would we like to? They were a church group from Little Rock, Arkansas, and they had bought too many tickets, and the park wouldn’t refund them. So they would like to bless someone else. SERIOUSLY? Those tickets were worth over $200. So they handed us tickets to the park.

Well, we went! Kayla is almost 9 and has never been there, and has been begging for years! Since $200 is never readily available to just play with in our strict get-out-of-debt budget, we weren’t really counting on ever going, so to be able to take our kids for free was just too amazing an offer to pass up!

Kayla on the Carousel (sorry about the lighting!)

Kayla would have spent the whole day on the roller coasters but she had to give Hannah some time to do the kiddie rides too. We tried to split it as evenly as possible. Kayla was also very good at taking her sister on some of the kiddie rides that adults couldn’t go on. Such a great big sister!

Hannah Riding a “Motorcycle” – she also rode the fire truck and the sports car!

Me on the train ride (incidentally, the train was named “Janelle”

Truthfully, I don’t think we have ever been that spontaneous in our lives. We were totally unprepared for an amusement park. We had about 3 diapers and a few gluten-free bars and pretzels that Brad had thrown into the diaper bag just in case the kiddos started to whine. But they were so excited that they didn’t want to stop riding long enough to eat anyway. Around 2 we ate our bars and got back at it. Finally around 4 we decided we should get something to eat, so we went to a local restaurant with a gluten-free menu in Hershey, then came back to go to the zoo. You get free admission to the Hershey Zoo when you enter from the park, and we weren’t about to pass that up, since we had heard they had just gotten in an albino alligator and we thought it would be so cool to see.

Albino Alligator, one of about 100 in the world!

Two Bald Eagles

So, all in all, we had to spring $30 for a gluten-free restaurant meal (sooo exciting for the girls since we NEVER eat out!) and $12 to rent a stroller. Yes, we did pay it, because we didn’t have the stroller in the trunk and we just decided, for the sake of sanity, that the $12 was worth it. And it definitely was!

So hopefully you’ll forgive me for being a very negligent blogger today and rejoice in the awesome fun gift that we received.

Hannah missed her afternoon nap for probably the first time ever, and she was a trooper about it, but she fell asleep on the way home. I caught it live, hope you enjoy it! Nothing better than a sleepy munchkin.