Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Dollywood for Isaac's Birthday

I have written on my Blog in this past about why we have quit throwing birthday parties. While we aren't making a hard and fast rule, we have decided, that for the foreseeable future, we are going to do things instead of parties. JB and I have both decided that we don't like parties. We don't enjoy our children during these big parties. And the cost is rather astronomical for something we don't really want do. (And this is coming from someone who does things cheap. I can't fathom how much some people are spending on parties.) 

But doing fun things together? F-U-N!

This goes along with our intentional lifestyle. We are trying to live intentionally. We are trying to live a life of purpose, choosing what we fill our time with carefully. This is often easy to do, but sometimes it is painful. I recently decided not to make a long weekend trip that I really wanted to do because I knew it wasn't in our best interest despite the fact that I wanted to do it.

We are letting the kiddos choose (with a little direction from us) something that they'd like to do on their birthday. Isaac? No surprise. He chose Dollywood. (Which worked out nicely since we have season passes.) We couldn't go on his birthday, but just the six of us spent a wonderful day there a few weeks back.

We make a point to go to Dollywood during the week, while school is in session, and we start early in the morning. If it gets crowded, we leave, but most times, if we stick to our during the week while school is in, things go well.

Here are some pics from Isaac's birthday "party."

Hannah drove one of the cars for the first time. She loved this. "Rockin' Roadway" is one of the kids favorite rides.

The only downside about Dollywood is that I have to ride most things with Hannah (and sometimes Abigail). One of my husband's only weaknesses is that he gets motion sickness. So the "fun" defaults to me.

These two: best friends half the time and worst enemies the other half.

I love her little hands in the air.

 I really think I was feeling more sick then scared here.

This ride .... not one I like to ride at all. I totally take one for the team on this!

Sidge's favorite thing to do at Dollywood is the bird show. This time, JB got picked to be the volunteer.

Holding a vulture.

For Isaac's birthday, we allowed him to pick out a bag of rocks at their favorite store there. Isaac LOVES his rocks.

A great family picture -- that required some "tough love" to get them to agree to.

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