Have a great day at Great America!

My kids had never been to Great America, at least not with me.  Occasionally one of them will be invited to go with a friend, but the thought of shelling out $60/person has been too much .  (Jackson did go with Nate Hesterman and some other friends last week.)  This year we signed up for the Great America reading program; the reward is a free pass to the park for every participant and their teacher.  The Quandt family and Lizzie Compasio and us all headed to G.A. on Thursday; Nancy agreed to do the spinny rides and I would do the roller coasters.We envisioned that Ruthie and Sonja would stick together on the kiddie rides and the older girls would go on the scary rides.  
By mid-afternoon I had a headache.  Eight girls would surround me, giving me their opinions, simultaneously.  Factions developed.  No matter which ride I decided we should try next, someone was disappointed.  We determined early on that Ruthie was not comfortable on roller coasters or log rides.  Unfortunately for her, Sonja adored them.  While we were on the Whizzer roller coaster Sonja kept laughing and yelling, "This is so fun!  I love this!" That inevitably left Ruthie alone with her mom for portions of the day.  Sigh.  But that is not to say that we did not have fun...we did!  We had a blast getting the bejeebers scared out of us.  And the later on it got, the shorter the lines got, the more rides we squeezed in.  By the end we convinced Ruthie to try the log ride and the Roarin' Rapids ride.  Now we didn't have the sun to dry us off, but we all had the pleasure of enjoying rides together. We stayed until closing time at 10.  We couldn't bring ourselves to buy dinner in the park...$10 for a slice of pizza!...so we swung by McDonalds on the way home...$21 for 10 of us!  It was a fun day and my girls are eager to go again.  Next year I will have a better game plan laid out ahead of time and hopefully no need to pop an Excedrin. :)