For Father's Day, Allan decided he wanted to take a trip down to Salem to visit Enchanted Forrest. We have been planning to take Ethan here for quite some time, and decided we were just going to force ourselves to pack up the family, and head down south.
At first, Ethan wasn't too thrilled with being there. He's finally hit that age, where he understands fear, and associates anything dark as being "scary". So as we walked through the first part, of the houses based on nursery rhymes, he was not his occasional happy self. But the, we made it to the old woman who lives in a shoe. And for those of you who haven't been there, they have a great big slide built in to the shoe, that goes down a steep hill, and the kids can go down it with their siblings, friends, or parents. At first, Ethan wasn't all that thrilled with the idea of going down, and made sure that his mom or dad went down with him, and that holding hands was mandatory the whole way down. But once he realized he liked it, he wouldn't give us the satisfaction of his enjoyment, and would agree to keep going down, but in his normal temperamental way. So we went down it three or four times before moving on.
Then, we came to the next part of the area, where there are some fun shooting games, boat driving games, and another slide that the kids can go down on their own. It took a lot of fighting to get him to go down, but eventually he got hooked. He does love a good slide. But we shied away from this one quickly, when we realized that it leads to an unsupervised area, where I didn't feel comfortable having Ethan go to on his own.
As we kept playing, and walking, we made it to the "big" rides, which Allan was excited to be able to take Ethan on. And of course, Ethan loved them. Though he wasn't big enough for the log ride yet. They also had an area that had rides built specifically for younger kids, that was safe, and Ethan was in heaven. He went on the Frog Hopper, which at first scared him because he didn't know what to expect, but after he got the hang of it, we had a hard time pulling him away from it. They also had a mini Farris wheel that he enjoyed riding, a train (which everyone knows how much Ethan loves trains!) and bumper boats, which were also a favorite of his. Thanks to Allan's friend Brian, Ethan was given a ride bracelet, that allowed him to go on as many rides as he wanted, as much as he wanted. So all in all, he had a great time celebrating Father's Day. And it brought joy to Allan, getting to see him have some fun.
We look forward to heading up to Silverwood again in the next month. Last year was great, but this year will prove to be much more fun for Ethan!
MIA
13 years ago
