Reading the last line from Longfellow’s poem “A Psalm of Life” it occurred to me that he could have been talking about parenting:

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Labor and wait. Like planting a vegetable gardening. Or parenting a teenager.

Yesterday’s labor involved water slides and roller coasters.

Canada and Canobie Lake have become our end of summer traditions. Don’t let these kids tell you we didn’t do anything over summer vacation.

For my Mid-Atlantic peeps, Canobie Lake is like a slightly smaller version of Hershey Park with a few less coasters. Probably just as many tattoos on display.

We have our amusement park attack plan down at this point. We head straight for the water park when it opens. It’s only coincidence that there is a bar nearby.

When the water slide lines back up, we head for the coasters or the spinning rides, depending on your preference.

All the Donohues are mainly coaster people by trade. We rode Untamed four times.

The good thing about coordinating five families and almost twenty people is that you can take over entire rides.

Turns out bumper cars brings out Michelle’s maniacal evil laugh. Not pictured. She was probably sneaking up behind me as I took this picture.

Another milestone passed this year. We can now let the kids roam on their own as a pack.

Which allowed for a parent timeout at the beer tent…

Despite being in an amusement park most of the day, we still needed to get in the daily quota of cartwheels.

No amusement park day is complete without a taste of the novelty ice cream abomination that is Dippin’ Dots.

Our personal Yes Day was finished off with our favorite burritos.

Well, not quite finished.

We still had a two hour drive to the Cape because they ‘surprised’ us yesterday by telling us they were going to do the first coat of stain on the floors and we had to be out of the house for at least 24 hours.

Kitchen reno stories. A whole separate blog…