Certified Scuba Diver, Carowinds and A Simple Sunday

Congratulations to Chase!!!

(Top: J.Crew / Skirt: J.Crew / Sandals: TKEES)

He officially became a certified scuba diver on Friday!

(I ordered 2 large cookie cakes with scuba flag designs on them from Publix for their graduation and thought they did such a good job!) 

My personal interest in scuba diving can without a doubt bc attributed to my dad who has been a diver since his teens. He’s always had immense respect and interest in the ocean and inspired me to get certified in college with Ryan. (Is my dad’s love of the ocean why I wanted to be a marine biologist as a kid or was that just every millenial’s dream? Ha!) Now our family’s scuba diving tradition continues with Chase!

My dad has been talking to Chase about possibly getting scuba certified for years because he could sense his natural interest in nature and marine life. Chase has been talking about getting scuba certified for years and this year, now that he’s 10 and officially old enough, we made it happen through a kids’ scuba camp at a local dive shop.

The format of the camp had Chase completing all of his written work before it began. He spent the two weeks before camp reading the material and taking online quizzes before he passed his big scuba test. (He did everything on his own and passed with a 98 percent! Go Chase!!)

The practical side of scuba camp took place over five weekdays and began with 12-foot pool dives before progressing to dives in a quarry. He was excited for camp every single day and truly seemed to love it. Now we’re only all the more excited for our trip to Key West with my parents at the end of the month where he’ll get to use his new skills in the ocean!

Saturday

Saturday began with World Cup prep!! Have you guys been watching? Our family is all in — 3 soccer-obsessed kids and a soccer-loving husband will do that to ya — and it’s been a true blast for us!

I think so much of what we’ve loved about the World Cup has been the country pride and the competition between countries. The boys love listening to the national anthems (and watching the players and fans sing with such pride and passion), learning where the countries are/their population/size, looking up their flags, etc. It’s felt like more than soccer to our family and something we’ve really been enjoying together!

Since World Cup games were not on until the early evening on Saturday, we didn’t stick around home for long and made our way to Carowinds in mid-morning for a day of rollercoasters and waterpark fun. We were invited to the park to try a couple new things (more on that below) and jumped at the chance to spend the day together at our local amusement park.

(Dress: Habitual via Nordstrom Rack — it was a great HOT day dress!)

We began our day at Camp Snoopy which is sitll our family’s favorite part of Carowinds. It’s the younger-kid section of the park with rides all three of our boys can do together. Our favorite ride for years has been the Woodstock Express, a more traditional wooden rollercoaster with exciting but not-too-scary drops and turns, so that’s where we began!

Next up was our second favorite Camp Snoopy coaster, Snoopy’s Racing Railway, which is such a smooth but fast and exciting coaster big and little kids can ride. (It reminds me of Barnstormer at Disney World for any Disney fans!)

A new-to-us ride was Charlie Brown’s River Raft Blast which was a crowd favorite for our crew! After boarding a large raft boat, you can use the water cannon blaster in front of you to spray spectators as your raft meanders through the water.

The people watching the boats often don’t realize just how far the water sprays which made it extra hilarious. Spectators can also shoot back which made it feel like a water battle of sorts and anything that involves water and a battle of any kind it right up our boys’ alley.

From there we our family was invited to try out Carowind’s new Beagle Scout Badge Quest program and I feel like I’m in a tricky spot because it’s unfortunately not something I can recommend. It’s an interactive scavenger hunt that has sooo much potential but I have to wonder if kids tested it out before it was unveiled at the park?? It involved a decent amount of running around in the heat to stations with challenges that weren’t the easiest to understand (not from a “this is hard” standpoint but from a “what are they even asking?” standpoint). Our kids LOVE challenges and scavenger hunts and don’t need a good prize to motivate them to complete something like this but, that being said, the prize kids win after completing a bunch of stations is basically a colorful token with a Charlie Brown character on it. Had we paid $17.99 per kid for this experience, I would’ve been annoyed. I think this is one of those programs that could be tweaked fairly easily and be truly awesome but it’s not quite there yet.

Thankfully everything else we’ve come to expect and enjoy about Carowinds made the day a lot of fun for our family! Chase and Ryder lucked into a handful of front row spots on their favorite rollercoasters and Rhett’s height bumped up a bit from last time so he was able to do more fast rides — a huge plus for a kid with a need for speed!

Since Saturday was a HOT one, ending our time at Carowinds at the waterpark was exactly what our sweaty family needed.

(Bikini Top: Stylest / Bikini Bottoms: Stylest — code PBFINGERS15 saves 15% / Sunglasses: Amazon) 

In the past when we’ve tried to do the amusement park and water park in one day with our kids we regretted it because it was a little too much for young kids but we’re in a better spot now and loved ending the day this way! I think we did nearly 10 lazy river laps (which is basically a lazy river race for our kids) and the boys were all about the wave pool, as always.

We made it home just after the Norway/England World Cup game began and settled in to watch! We were all caught up in the underdog story of Norway and hoped they’d fair better but man oh man England was such a likable team (especially Jude Bellingham!) that we couldn’t help but feel happy for them when they came out on top.

The next game — Argentina vs. Switzerland — began at 9 p.m. which was a little late for our younger kids, especially after a day at an amusement park. We let them watch through the first goal before promising them they’d get to see the highlights on Sunday morning.

Sunday

Sunday we were all in the mood for a more relaxed day. We went to the early church service but spent the rest of the day at home. We did some chores around the house and yard work but sprinkled some fun stuff in there as well including backyard board games, soccer, a walk with Comet and lake swimming.

I went through our games and puzzles yesterday and that was all I needed to do to resurrect some of our old favorites. We keep a bunch of puzzles more easily accessible in our downstairs cabinet (shout out to this Walmart cabinet — currently on major sale! — for doing the heavy lifting for years) but figured we could use a refresh and rotated some new (but actually old) games into this cabinet. What’s old is officially new again as the boys began reaching for some tried and true favorites they forgot about like Outfoxed!

This game has survived the donation bin for 5+ years because it’s such a good one for a range of ages. It’s a collaborative game where kids work together to catch a thief. All three boys have fun with it and it’s enjoyable for adults, too!

As for the week ahead, it will be the summertime balance of squeezing in teeny moments of work while soaking up lots of kid time. I LOVE summer so, so much and feel like we’ve entered the “chill side” of our summer after a crazy June. I’m here for it!!