Busch Gardens!!!

As I mentioned earlier, we spent the week last week with Robbie's parents. I plan to blog about the entire trip, and include lots of cute pictures of course ;), but for now, I want to focus on Friday. We decided to take William to Busch Gardens as part of his birthday gift. They have a Sesame Street Forest of Fun, and I just knew he would love it! I was a little depressed when we realized the character dining buffet was closed for the season, ugh! Despite that, we had a TON of fun!!! I found our tickets on LivingSocial for half off! William is still free of course, so that was a big bonus!

We left Robbie's parents house around 8:45, and I realized I couldn't find my years-old sunglasses. After searching everywhere, including stopping my mom on the road to search her car, we gave up and stopped at Target and I got my first pair of aviators! I have to say, I love them. At first, I thought they were weird looking on me, haha, but I am a fan! Anyway, we made it to the park around 10:45. We had told William he was meeting Elmo, so the entire way there, we kept hearing, "Elmo, Elmo!" He was ready!

We're here!

Riding on the tram!

We visited the SS Forest of Fun first! This trip was mainly about William. Robbie and I rode only rides that he could ride. The only exception was Alpengeist. Robbie really wanted to ride that, so he went alone, haha! We picked a great day to go! There were NO lines. The weather was hot, but beautiful. It was Howl O Scream time, so we did want to leave the park before 6pm - that is when all the scariness starts. Ha! There were 3 rides that W could ride in the Forest of Fun. He loved them all! We also shopped the awesome gift shop and we met Abby, the Count, AND ELMO!!! Elmo was a huge hit - he high fived him, hugged him, and posed for pictures willingly. He was a little hesitant of Abby, and freaked out by the Count - but I think it is because he was in a dark room haha. We bought the pictures anyway!

So excited!

After we left there, we rode the train to another country to eat lunch.  I'm just going to address something here. Yes, William has an Abby Cadabby doll. We bought it in the gift shop. He is only two years old people, he knows nothing of gender roles and that he "shouldn't" have a girl doll. He just knows that Abby is one of his favorite characters, and has been from the beginning, and she is one of the only ones he did not have in stuffed form. Rant over.

Choooo choooo!

 We had lunch at a smokehouse. The food was okay, and we spent too much on it. Yuck. After lunch, we wanted to find some more rides for William. We rode the carousel, and then headed over to Dino Land. It was another area just for kids with kiddie rides - and a few of them, William could ride all by himself! He LOVED that. His favorite were the boats. When we went to get him out, he said, "Noooo, boat!" and grabbed the steering wheel. He had a ball in this part, riding rides and climbing through the giant treehouse.

We then rode the Sky line to the next country. I loved that, ha! William was mesmerized by all of the animals and rides that we could see.  Robbie and I both decided we are getting too old for these intense roller coasters, haha! The new one, Verbolten, looked absolutely terrifying. After that, we stopped in to see a show about extraordinary pets. It was so funny, and they have some very talented birds, cat, mice, and dogs! ;) We rode the teacups and a couple more kiddie rides, and then decided to finish the day back at the Forest of Fun, since it was near the exit.

The FoF had a splash pad that all of the kids were enjoying. We didn't have a bathing suit, but I stripped William down to his shorts and let him have at it. He was just exhausted from the fun of the day, and was not interested, ha! However, he wasn't too tired to run through "Oscar's Yucky Forest" for forever, or ride the Oscar and Elmo rides again!

Oscar ride with Mama!

Elmo ride with Daddy!

Look how high!!

So brave!

We had an awesome day! We missed Nana and Grandma (who wanted to come but couldn't work it out), but it was fun to have a day of just the three of us! Robbie and I hadn't been to BG in about 8 years or so, so it was fun to see it all again! Poor William fell asleep riding the tram back to the parking lot and slept almost the entire way back to Linda and Leroy's house!