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Camping In Hershey

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Jul 28, 2008 in Family Stuff, Local Community, Scrapbooks

As you may have gathered from my previous post, we spent this weekend camping in Hershey, PA at the Hershey Highmeadow Campground, one of our favorites.

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We had a really nice time…with the exception of a few minor meltdowns due to the heat and the crowds – and half the time it was me melting down, not even the kids!  But after a break in the shade, a cold beverage and a chocolate-y snack, all was well.

We spent our first day (Saturday) hanging around at the campground – just enjoying the nice weather, swimming in the pool, playing some games – my parents even came up for a visit.

We purchased tickets for HersheyPark for Sunday, which meant that we could go on Saturday night for a few hours for a ‘free preview’ of the park.  Unfortunately, we were not the only ones on the park Saturday night – in fact, there was a record number of people at HersheyPark that night!  Between the Jonas Brothers and Brad Paisley concerts at the arena this weekend, the place was CRAZY!!!!

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Emily was very excited to see that she was a “Reese’s Cup” this year and was tall enough to go on most of the rides.  Andrew, of course, is now tall enough to go on anything he wants!

We fought our way through the crowds and managed to go on a few rides that first night, but that was about all we could take and left exhausted.

Sunday morning, we headed out bright and early – as guests of the campground, we got to enter the park an hour before it opened and enjoyed a few quick line-free rides.

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As soon as it opened, Emily, Matt and I headed over to the new “Boardwalk” – a huge waterpark filled with all kinds of fun things for the kids to do.  We changed into our swimsuits and played for about an hour…until it started to thunder.  At which point everything in the park shut down.

This was not such a bad thing – it was time for lunch and we needed to let the dogs out anyway, so we headed back to the camper on the shuttle bus and returned later in the afternoon after the skies had cleared.

Emily was proud to go on her first real roller coaster and Mike and Andrew went on a BUNCH of roller coasters including the new “Fahrenheit”– which to me looks just insane.  But no more insane than this one – the “Stormrunner” – which goes from a complete standstill to really-really fast at the very beginning of the ride.  Every time I saw the start of the ride and heard this creepy voice, I had my own personal little panic attack – and I wasn’t even on the ride!  I managed to take a video of Andrew’s car at the start of the ride – take a look at this (this voice still gives me nightmares):

Andrew on the StormRunner

And here he is by one of the loops:

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Matt doesn’t enjoy rides very much, but he waited very patiently at the ride exits for everyone to finish:

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We made reservations to stay at the campground again next year – between the campground, the amusement park, the water park and all the other activities, this is one of our favorite ‘one-gas-tank’ trips!

 
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Happy Birthday Andrew!

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Jul 28, 2008 in Family Stuff

Today my son Andrew is 14 YEARS OLD!!!!!  I can’t believe it – he’s growing up so fast!

And he’s at the age where it’s so easy to embarrass him – yesterday I mentioned to everyone that we saw (on the bus, at HersheyPark, at the campground, etc) that it was Andrew’s birthday the next day – he HATED that! 

Here he is trying to sit as far away from me as possible at the park:

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Then I woke him up with my own rendition of "Happy Birthday To You" this morning…he hated that too.

Here he is trying to avoid having his photo taken by me:

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I sang to him on our entire drive home from Hershey…he hated that even more.

Here’s when he wouldn’t even turn around and look at me on the Classic Car ride at HersheyPark (Matt couldn’t turn around – he was the one driving):

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But maybe he won’t hate this one little post – Andrew, I love you…happy birthday!

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Rescue Swimmers in Action!

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Jul 28, 2008 in Family Stuff, Local Community

Just a quick update – the same day that Emily and I toured the Coast Guard facility at the FAA Technical Center and visited with their rescue swimmers, there was a severe thunderstorm in the area later that afternoon.  The very helicopter that we sat in was called out to rescue passengers from a sinking boat just hours after we were in the helicopter – and the rescue swimmers had to jump in to the rough seas where they managed to save 2 of the 3 people on the boat!  When we saw it on the news, Emily was so excited to see ‘our’ helicopter involved in a rescue that very same day…

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