july: the infamous Izatt gang takes Lagoon!

Once upon a time last July, the entire Izatt extended family all took a quick break from our everyday lives as Civil War soldiers, ranchers, elegant ladies, saloon girls, cowgirls, cowboys, bandits, etc, and converged upon an unsuspecting amusement park in Utah.

The occasion was the birthday weekend for Pops/Lee/Bri, and we all met for dinner on Friday night, where we let the children run wild as we waited for enough tables to be ready... which ended up taking like an hour. Basically it's a good thing we all chatted and bonded outside because once we got inside and finally got to EAT we were all pretty focused on that ;).

The locals slept in their "houses" with real "beds" that night, while the rest of us (plus some kids) roughed it at the Lagoon campgrounds! ... as much as you can 'rough it' when there are shower and legit bathroom facilities right there. Whatever, I slept in a tent!

We attempted a group picture before we hit the park, I think the good one ended up on someone else's phone haha. We were missing Mallory (play practice? driver's ed?) and Eli (wisely still asleep).

And then it was go time! Carma and Jack and I headed straight for Kiddieland and it was perfect:

The lines were non-existent, so these two hit up every boat/helicopter/airplane/etc they could.

And then we met up with Anna, so Jack showed her around a bit. These two are just SO darling together. They killed me at regular intervals throughout the day:

We met up with the rest of our orange group for some more rides and YES I did dress all six of us in orange and YES I am a genius. It was sooo easy to find them in the crowds and it was sooo easy to remember what they were wearing (in case someone got lost). Chuck and the older boys + George spent the morning hitting up all the crazy rides over and over again - Wicked, Colossus, a bunch of other scary ones I don't know the names of. Chuck and Clyde and Will did not make it onto the crazy new elevator-looking one (what's it called? Insanity? Death Wish? Elevator?), Cannibal. It had juuuust opened a week or two prior and always had a crazy long line. I consider this an answer to my personal prayers but please don't tell my boys I'm the responsible party as they were devastated ;).

Courtney and I broke off from the bigger group after lunch to take Carma and Jack on some 'adult accompaniment required' rides. As always, the jeep ride and the puff the magic dragon roller coaster were extremely jostling and nausea-inducing BECAUSE I AM A WIMP but I didn't puke or cry so we're calling it a win!

I also didn't cry later that day when Courtney and Clyde and I took the Sky Ride across the park but that's mostly a miracle because I did freak out pretty good, yikes. I guess I forgot that heights kind of terrify me? so I agreed to get on and it was pretty much right away clearly a mistake. I don't know who runs Lagoon's website but I take considerable exception to the "Thrill Level: None" categorization as well as the advice to "Take a moment to relax" - I WISH. I was highly unrelaxed the whole ride - I was 88% sure Clyde was going to fall, so I got a SOLID grip on that kid that might have traumatized him for life. I forbade Clyde and Courtney from moving basically at all, I shouted out warnings to passing riders ('Hold on tight guys!' 'NO rocking!' 'Sit up straight!' 'You're good, almost there!'), I prayed pretty fervently, I refrained from swearing so I feel like I should get a bit more credit for that. Oh, I also demanded that Courtney tell me whether or not I was too fat to slide underneath the lap bar and plummet to my death hahahahaha. I don't even know who was more relieved when we got to the end - me, Clyde, Courtney, or the Lagoon security team who had surely been tipped off by alarmed fellow Sky Riders ;).

Luckily I spent the rest of the day firmly on the ground, attempting to photograph people mid-ride:

The Tidal Wave is a favorite - can you see Chuck and the boys (including George)? Super cute. We came back to this ride at the end of the night and they were able to ride it over and over with Amanda and Anna, who also loved it!

Carma was a superstar all day - she loved the rides and was chill in her stroller and even managed a couple naps.

I stole some pictures from other people who caught some fun that I wasn't around for - at one point there was a family bumper car war - I love Clyde and George looking back at each other before the start :).

Will and Lily hung out a lot - here they are prepping for an 'egg drop' adventure and possibly having second thoughts once they started going up, haha:

OH, and our 'Western' family pictures! This was quite the production, considering there are 22 of us and we timed our visit to the portrait studio right after two other huge groups, whoops! It meant that we were hanging out in line for about an hour... in a pretty small space... in the July heat... with restless little kids. We joked that if our family could survive that, we can survive anything! 

And luckily the staff there was amazing! They flitted around with costumes and props and didn't blink when I changed my mind... and Carma's... and they managed to get both Jack AND Eli in costume which was a-maz-ing and they ignored me yelling "No more guns! Let's just take the dang pictures!" when various family members kept requesting more prop weaponry hahaha.

#sorrynotsorry for posting all the pictures - I figure Mom and Pops paid good money for the CD and rights and they're all just so hilarious and perfect! I mean, can we even handle James, the cutest little bugle boy ever? Or Mallory, acclaimed actress, struggling not to laugh in the serious pictures? Obviously that front little row is just darling. And Chuck is just the best!

And now for a few more pictures I stole from Chuck and Melissa - I love how much cousin fun was had that day:

And a few more, including Mom and Pops on the front of some roller coaster.

Fun fact: I've looked at this picture at least twelve times getting this blog ready and I juuuust barely realized Carma is in it hahahaha. Anyways, thus concludes our awesome Izatt family reunion/birthday celebration at Lagoon! I'm so glad that I married into such a great family. In-law relationships can be really tricky to navigate sometimes but just like any relationship, they're so much more rewarding when you look for the positive and put effort in and all that good stuff and I love that we have such good relationships with both of our extended families. Watching my kids with their cousins/aunts/uncles/grandparents is one of my favorite things ever!