Boondocking it

Two weekends ago, the Pauley cousins were in town for a visit.  We fished, and played and wrestled (the cousins, not me, that would've been a little weird, watched it rain buckets and when we were tired of that, we headed down to Denver to go to Boondocks.  It's one of those of go-cart, mini-golf, arcade sort of places that we thought would have a pretty good likelihood of appealing to kids between the ages of 3 and 16. 

First up, the junior go-carts for the junior members of the party.  Will could drive his all by himself.  And he was pretty proud of that. 

 Reina needed a little help from the Boondocks employee who should win the title of most-patient-jr-go-cart-attendant-ever.  Reina couldn't master steering and accelerating at the same time.  She'd hit the gas, drive directly into the barrier, try to turn the wheel, get stuck, repeat.  Finally this nice young man just helped steer her around the course, lap after lap after lap.  Notice how she's in a yellow car?  Naturally! 

This is my favorite kind of picture of me.  Pop-pop and Grandma joined us at Boondocks because Pop-pop has been itching to go there for a while now and jumped at the opportunity to have an excuse.  So Grandma was holding Reina while I did the (senior?) go-carts with the big cousins.  As you can imagine, Reina was seriously unimpressed with this turn of events. I couldn't hear her over the roar of the go-carts but I could read her lips, "I want to go with mommy, that's not fair, I'm mad, etc. etc. etc."  So anyway, Grandma took a picture of us on the go-carts .... it's hard to tell but that's me in the middle getting lapped by Alena and getting passed by Ben.  I might be a speed demon in town but on the go-cart track I'm a 90-yr old driving a 68 Buick with my fluffy dog on my lap.  Slowly, very very slowly. 

In an attempt to appease HRH, Grandma apparently let her play with the camera.  I think it's a very artistic shot of the lovely blue sky, white clouds and the top of her pouty little head. 

Reina finally had her moment when Pop-pop took her and the whole gang on to the bumper boats.  Not only do these boats bump into each other but each one has a little spray gun on the front that you can shoot people with.  As you can imagine, this greatly appealed to certain members of the Pauley party.  "I'll do it MYSELF Pop-pop!" 

Let's file this one under 'reasons why 5-yr olds don't have driver's licenses.'  Alena did a great job of keeping the little daredevil in the boat. 

I wonder if this is what the Spanish Armada looked like taking on the English ships?  In this case it's Ben, Will and Alena ganging up on Pop-pop and Reina.  I'm not sure who won. 

My two favorite Nebraskans!

After we were all sufficiently soaked and sun-stroked, we spent some time inside the arcade.  Will and Reina both quickly caught on to the fact that the arcade games spit out tickets that you could then redeem for little tiny pieces of plastic at the ticket counter.  Unfortunately their mom kept stealing their tokens to get in a quick game of skeeball....but thankfully their generous cousin shared all of her tickets and the day ended well.