A near Van Gogh experience

I chose our latest adventure. I thought it would be fun to go to Park City and ride the Alpine slide, do some paddle boating and have a fun day outside in the mountains. Sean is always game for our adventures he says "it's fun and that's how I learn stuff." I guess one of the things about adventures is you never know exactly what you are going to learn.

We went to Park City and rode the ski lift up the mountain. Beautiful weather, warm, breezy. We saw a big fat ground hog. We talked about the different seasons and different activities you can do during the seasons. 

Then we took the Alpine slide down the mountain. Don and Sean were on one track and I was on the other so we raced. Sean was controlling the cart and was having so much fun. He just beamed all the way down. He said it was one of the greatest days ever.

Then we rode the Eagle. Pretty lame. It's their idea of a modified zip line for kids.



We rode the roller coaster. I have never liked roller coasters but this one was cool. It went all through the woods and I had control over how fast it went. Fun times. After the rides were headed back to the car to go to lunch and then we wanted to go on the pedal boats at one of the other resorts. Sean really wanted to do the Alpine slide one more time so we  did. This time Sean rode with me. He wanted to race his dad. There in was my first mistake. I lost hold of Sean once going down a water slide and it scared the crap out of me. We were going down the Alpine slide. Sean was controlling the speed and we were booking it full board ahead. I'm guessing we were doing around 25 mph. I looked down at my feet and they had fallen off the bottom of the sled. I thought that doesn't look right and tried to pull my foot up...CRASH we flipped the cart. I hit the side of the wall and was trying to hang on to Sean. I had both my arms around him and my head was banging on the side of the track. Somehow I flipped Sean over the side of the track. Don said all he could see was feet flying in the air and when he saw Sean he had landed on his feet.  Sean had two abrasions on his arms. His face looked a little swollen but we couldn't find any damage. I had felt my ear hitting the side of the wall. Blood was dripping. I reached up and my earring was gone and I wasn't sure if I had an ear lobe or not. Sean was crying but being brave and I felt so bad I wanted to cry (but I didn't). Sean was upset because he was driving. He asked "was it my fault?" I said no honey it was my fault I moved my legs and it made us lose balance." Sean said "that's OK mommy, it was an accident, I still love you." It was so scary because I just had the full impact of how bad it could have been. I could have landed on top of Sean and broken his bones or he could have a head injury. It just scared me so bad. We were standing on the side of the mountain with our slides and another family came down. They were freaking "are you OK!!!" They were stopping but we told them to just keep going there was nothing they could do for us. We got back on our slides (Don took Sean) and made it down the mountain. The EMT's were waiting for us. They were really nice and took good care of Sean. They carried my bloody sled away. He said we were the worse injury of the day but the day was young. The day before someone broke their tib and fib and they had to fly out a head injury. That made me even more grateful that we were not hurt badly. They said usually the kids get the brunt of it and it's usually facial trauma.

My ear was a mess. My earring had pulled up and out the top of my ear lobe. It was all in pieces, minus a little piece. So it needed stitches. We went to the ER. They did a really good job putting it back together. It looked much better than I expected. It hurt like crap when they were numbing it. I was so very grateful that it was me getting stitched up and not Sean. I mean really, really, really grateful. I would have just been sick if I had to watch him get numbed. It took a long time because they used really tiny suture and had to piece it back together. I got some big abrasions on my arms and legs and a big bruise but all told I think we came out pretty darn good. If we ever do the slide again I'm wearing a helmet and so is Sean. AND a long sleeve shirt though I  did have long pants and I still got abrasions through them.

Poor Don, he had the trauma of watching us crash then he was in the ER when they sewed up my ear but he said he couldn't watch because it made him sick. I was just happy I still had an ear. I guess no more earrings for me:)

Lessons learned from our adventure.

Sean learned about EMT's, stitches, abrasions, crashes, speed... and probably some other things too.

It ended up being an expensive day out.
I was thinking maybe next weekend we will all go hang gliding. Or maybe we'll just go bowling.