Last week the boys and our besties, the Z’s, hit up our favorite local water theme park, Busch Gardens Adventure Island, for one final blast of summer fun before school starts.

Last summer we had season passes and went several times, but this summer it just seemed to never work out until now.

As soon as we got there the kids scattered.

This is one of the things we love about this park. It is not so huge that we are afraid to let the kids go off on their own, especially now that they are older and they are all good swimmers.

Val and I hung out under our chiki hut until we couldn’t stand the heat any more,

then we floated around the lazy river a couple times.

We had decided ahead of time that the lazy river would be the extent of our getting wet today.

All of the pictures I took at the park were either with my waterproof camera (awesome for a water park) or with my phone.

The lazy river (they call it the Rambling Bayou) winds through much of the park, so you get good views of many of the water slides.

We have always set up camp near the chiki huts behind Mango Joe’s on the south end of the park.

This time we splurged a little bit and rented a chiki hut so we were a bit closer and didn’t have to set up umbrellas.

Aren’t Jillian and her boyfriend Joey the cutest?

The kids had to check in periodically, and they usually showed up at the chiki hut when they were hungry.

The next time that Val and I got too hot to stand it any longer, we hit up the lazy river with the boys. I can’t believe I managed to get all five of us in the same shot!

You can float in an inner-tube, or you can just walk with the current.

The boys prefer the walking/swimming/floating without a float method.

We also walked over to the wave pool with the boys…

but it ended up thundering so they had to shut down all the attractions for a little while. This always happens in the late afternoon. We ended up huddling under the shelter at Mango Joe’s until we decided it was time to leave.

As always, we had a fun day at Adventure Island and agreed that we are sad to see summer vacation come to an end. See you next summer Adventure Island!