A Day at Six Flags Great America in Chicago

Marc saw a deal on Twitter for tickets to Six Flags Great America for $15 each. So he decided to get them and begin looking into hotel prices. He then found a Fairfield Inn at $47 a night. He did all this on Wednesday. He decided that we should go this past weekend. We left Friday afternoon and went directly to bed. We spent all day, 10:00am-10:00pm at the park. We slept in on Sunday, hit an outlet mall on the way home, and got home Sunday night. We found the secret to getting the kids to sleep in, keep them at an amusement park for 12 hours the day before. ;)

Marc was very excited to go back to Six Flags. It has been 2 years since we have been there. Samantha got to experience her first amusement park ride. It was a ride on the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo in the kids area.Marc enjoyed seeing all of the characters. When he went to see Daffy Duck, Daffy took his hat and put it on his own head. Marc enjoyed that!Marc has really gotten into Scooby-Doo lately, so he was thrilled when we found Shaggy in the park!We were able to find a few rides that Samantha was able to go on. She did a couple in the kids area, the train ride, the carousel (her first one by the way) and the space needle.
She really enjoyed the carousel, but it was too long for her attention span. She got really wiggly about half-way through the ride.Both Marc and Samantha enjoyed the space needle ride. Marc had fun playing eye-spy and finding rides he had already been on. Samantha enjoyed sitting on the seat (somewhere other than her stroller) for awhile, and then got wiggly, again, so we let her stand up and look out the window.Marc wasn't tall enough to ride any of the roller coasters last year, but he is this year. We call him "our little thrill junkie" so we decided that we would try an old-fashion wooden roller coaster. It was called the Viper. Daddy Marc is not a huge fan of roller coaster and I enjoy them so I got to take little Marc on it. We stood in line for about 30 minutes. When we got into our "car" I got him buckled and the lap bar down. I sat with my arm around him, hugging him to my body to make sure he was safe and didn't go anywhere (I was being paranoid). We went down the 1st of about 9 hills, and I hear next to me "Mom, I don't like this!". All I could do was squeeze him tighter and talk to him as we were going the rest of the ride. I swear he told me about half-way through the ride that he was going to throw up. He says he didn't say that, but I swear he did. I will always remember his first ride on a roller coaster!After a full day of rides, food, and fun, we settled down to watch the evening show and following parade. They had about 5 of the characters and a bunch of singers/dancers singing some songs and all dancing around. It was at night so they had a bunch of cool colored lights lighting up the stage. After the show there was a parade. Again, since it was at night, each float had a character and lots of cool looking lights.
We arrived at the park when it opened at 10:00am and left the park when it closed at 10:00pm. We wiped the kids out!

Tonsils :(

When we went to Marc's 5-year well child appointment in November, our doctor told us that his tonsils were huge. She referred us to an ENT. Her name was Dr Eyed. I will NEVER refer anyone I know to her. She was rude, cold, and was not very child-friendly. She asked me some questions about Marc, like if he snored, if he has trouble swallowing. She asked m if he had any speech problems. I told her he was in speech class. She asked me what sounds he was working on, so I told her. She very rudely told me that those sounds had nothing to do with his tonsils. She said that she couldn't just take them out for no reason, there had to be be reason behind having them removed. She said the only option was to do a sleep study at the hospital and that we would not be allowed to stay with him. I cried, then called my primary doctor. We decided that that was going a little to the extreme, so we decided not to do the sleep study. My doctor told us to keep an eye on Marc and to watch for a few signs that might lead us to having him looked at again. She had us look out for recurring sickness, snoring, or signs of sleep apnea. After going on vacation with him in May/June, we discovered that he snores, ALOT! In June he kept clearing his throat all the time. When we asked him why he was doing that he said it felt like there was always something stuck in his throat. So, I made an appointment with our regular doctor to take a look at him again. We decided to have him see a ENT again. i told her that I would NOT go back to the same doctor again. She asked me if I knew of a ENT that we wanted to go to. We went to see Dr. Winkle (thanks for the referral Tracey!) on Friday. The whole office was great. All of the personnel were friendly to us all. Dr Winkle was nice. He was shocked at how big Marc's tonsils are! He asked if we had ever seen any signs of sleep apnea. We said no, but we aren't usually in the same room with him when he sleeps. He said that with tonsils that big, that he would be shocked if he was not having any apnea while he slept. So we decided to have his tonsils taken out. We are a little worried about having it done, but know that it is the best thing to be done.
He will be having them out on Monday, August 17th. Marc is looking forward to being able to eat a lot of ice cream, pudding, jello, and popsicles. We would appreciate any and all prayers that can be said! Thanks!

15-Months Old!!

We had Samantha's 15-month well child check-up on Friday. The doctor says she :looks great". She is THRILLED with Samantha's vocabulary. She was not concerned that she is not completely walking on her own yet. She said as long as we keep seeing progress, not to be worried. Here are her stats:
Height: 31 3/4 inches - 82nd percentile
Weight: 22 pounds 3 oz - 36th percentile