Friday: Family Fun Day at Diamond D Ranch
Friday’s fun took us to Diamond D Ranch in Jacksonville. I was determined to find something unique and animal-related to do as part of Chase’s birthday celebration and was thrilled when a deep dive on Google lead me to Diamond D Ranch. We majorly lucked out because the ranch hosted one of their Family Fun Days on Friday so we nabbed tickets and kicked off celebrating our almost 8-year-old on Friday morning.
The farm was so much more than a working ranch. It was a slam-dunk place to visit for young children and we had no trouble spending more than two hours immersing ourselves in the activities.
The pony rides were the biggest hit with the two-year-old toddlers in our group while Chase loved fishing and Ryder and Callie (5 and almost 5-years-old) seemed to love the wagon ride and feeding the cows, buffalo and goats most.
It was an overcast and drizzly day which majorly worked in our favor since we didn’t have to deal with overheated kids in the intense Florida summer heat this time of year. Aside from animal-related fun, the kids also seemed to enjoy playing in a small corn pit, bouncing in bounce houses and digging into shave ice on the way out!
Saturday: Celebrating Chase at Adventure Landing + Shipwreck Water Park
Chase’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year (the birthday jackpot!) and with heat advisories in the area, we knew it was too hot to do much outside other than water-related activities. We thought he’d love a day at the local Jacksonville Beach water park and man oh man were we right! Chase did every single water slide he was big enough to do, swam for hours in the lazy river and wave pool and had the biggest smile on his face all day long. I can already tell 8 is going to be such a fun age as his birthday just offered me a little glimpse into what is to come.
Chase and I were able to do several water slides together and separately and there was one slide called the Half Pipe that felt like a crazy-intense drop off in a tube. Chase didn’t meet the height requirement but he wanted to do the slide next to me and told me he’d meet me at the bottom. He yelled out, “I love you, Mom!” before he took off down the slide on his own and then called back up to me, “You got this, Mom!” before it was my turn to do the drop-off slide. These small moments felt extra special to me, especially on his birthday.
My sister and her family joined our family at the water park as well which made the whole day extra fun! They also surprised Chase with some arcade tokens and he was thrilled to be able to play at the arcade before we left which made him absolutely light up! We wrapped up Chase’s birthday with pizza (the birthday boy’s request), cake and presents and it truly was such a wonderful day celebrating our biggest kid! None of our kids have cared much about birthday parties this year so we’ve just embraced filling their birthdays with extra family fun which feels so special.
Sometimes the internet and social media can make it feel like you have to do big, splashy things for kid birthdays but I know in my heart a waterpark day with family was the perfect way to ring in 8-years-old for Chase. He loved it and we loved watching him have the best day!
Sunday: St. Augustine Olympic Triathlon
Sunday morning we were up dark and early to make our way down to Vilano Beach to cheer for Ryan and my brother-in-law, Ross, as they participated in their first Olympic Triathlon together.
Ryan and Ross are planning to do a Half Ironman in September and thought this would be a good way for Ross to get a triathlon under his belt before the big race this fall. We wanted to support our guys and thankfully everything seemed to work well for spectators as we saw the guys finish the swim, begin and end the bike and start and finish the run.
It was a much smaller race than the Half Ironmans we’ve been to recently which made it feel more manageable to spectate with a bunch of kids in the mix and yet oddly enough, despite all of this, it felt like one of the rougher races for the boys to watch because it was so hot. We joked they were melting (but really maybe that was just my patience?) and this experience just made me grateful Ryan usually selects more temperate races! I just wanted to share this here because we’ve had some fantastic spectating experiences that the boys have absolutely loved but spectating long races certainly isn’t without some fussiness. (Worth noting, Ryan ever tells us we have to watch him but usually it’s something we all love to do to support him! I guess ya win some and ya lose some and sweaty super-hot kids make ya lose some.)
As for the race itself, the guys did great! It was the first big ocean swim (not in a protected channel) for both guys and they did great on the bike and run portions of their race, too.
I think I would’ve passed out 100 times because of the heat but they managed to handle it well and finished with smiles on their faces. We were all very impressed!!
Now I’m off to soak up the last bit of our time in Florida. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
