Happy St. Patrick's Day

We had more winter weather on Friday, so school let out an hour early for Maddie. Despite the crazy weather, we were still able to go to the annual Service Auction/Ice Cream Social at the church Friday night. The kids had a lot of fun, and Andrew enjoyed making the rounds to get his free cotton candy, popcorn, ice cream, and sno cone. In fact, he ditched us all and ran from place to place. When he met back up with us with his sticky, sugary loot, he told me that it was the best 'carnibal' he had ever gone to. The girl's in the Ward were auctioning off various services to help raise money for their trip to Girl's Camp this summer. I won 6 hours each of baby sitting time from two different girls. One block of six hours I got for $20 and the other six hours I got for $25. So, 12 hours of baby sitting my four kids for less than $4 an hour is awesome!

Saturday we went down to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Williamsburg at the Busch Gardens theme park. My kids love going there. This year Andrew was able to graduate into more adventurous rides. When he was measured by a Busch Gardens employee and learned he was tall enough to ride some roller coasters he got very excited and told the employee he had been getting a lot of sleep and eating lots of food. I have been telling him if he wanted to grow tall enough to ride more of the big rides like Maddie, then he needed to go to sleep when I asked him and eat the foods I gave him. I'm so glad my "Mom trick" worked.

We usually go to Busch Gardens in the sweltering and humid summer, so it was quite odd to be walking around the park bundled up. There was even an occasional flurry while we were there, which my kids were very excited about.

Andrew's new rides this year included The Big Bad Wolf roller coaster, The Curse of DarKastle, Corkscrew Hill, and Escape from Pompeii. Maddie was cute about it and was eager to share her thrill-seeking advice with Andrew, including giving him warnings about what to expect on each ride.

Zack was happy as can be to ride the little horse ride over and over and over while Mylie was asleep in the stroller and Ben took the older kids on a ride. He kept yelling, "YeeHaw!" He was the only one on the ride for about ten minutes, and each time it ended he would look at the ride operator and yell, "Again! Again!"

Here are some pictures from the trip:

And here's one of Mylie this afternoon after church: