Our California Adventures: Day 4

Another amazing day was planned for us in California. This time, we drove about 45 minutes north of Monterey to the city of Gilroy where we enjoyed an amusement park called Gilroy Gardens. It's set agains some beautiful hills and is full of all sorts of trees and flowers (hence the garden part of the name). Most of the rides are geared toward younger children and I wasn't sure how James was going to react to them because it was his first time on a ride by himself. This picture opitomizes how he felt about the first ride. I'll admit, it was a little fast and up-and-down to be his first ride. I guess I'll live and learn. Everyone who was waiting for their children had to laugh every time James came around because he was the only one not thoroughly enjoying himself/herself.


I decided to try one more ride and thank goodness our next attempt at an amusement park ride went much better. He has really fallen in love with fire trucks, so he enjoyed just going around and around in his own little fire truck. And I was grateful that the whole day wasn't filled with me trying to entertain James while my nieces and nephews went on the rides.


This was James' favorite ride by himself. It was pretty much the same as the fire truck ride except that you could turn the steering wheel and you would move closer to the middle and then further away.



James and I enjoyed riding the ferris wheel 3 times with my niece, Lily. She had fun going up and down and seeing the world from the top. It really was a beautiful view.




They had the biggest set of jungle gym equipment I've seen in a long time and James loved going up and down the stairs and across the bridge that moves and turning the x's and o's. Oh and did I mention that he loves to go down the slide and then climb back up it and then slide down. I tried my darndest to get him to go up the stairs and not the slide, but eventually I got tired of having to take him off of it. Lucky for me he really enjoyed a twin slide so if a child wanted to go down, there was always the one next to James that they could use. :)

I don't have a picture of it, but my sister in-law, Jill, and I went on the roller coaster 3 times. (We probably would have gone more, but they closed all the rides down for the day after our third time). It wasn't the most thrilling one I've ever been on (because it was geared for younger kids like 10-12 year olds) but it served its purpose of giving Jill and me a break from watching our kids for a few minutes. My mother in-law and Kaia were sweet enough to watch them while we let the kids in us out and whooped and hollered with our hands up in the air. :)