chocolate world!

last friday the kids had the day off from school (yippee!!)
so we took my niece's son landon (is that my 2nd nephew? great nephew? whatever, he's family)
and met my friend beth (our youth pastor's wife) with her 3.75 children (she's expecting #4 in may) at chocolate world. it's free, and they give you free chocolate at the end.
what's not to love?



the trickiest part is walking across the moving carousel to step into one of these cars.
haley gladly took 2.5 yo mikenna and karis helped with 4yo ian. 1.5 yo eliana stuck with mama.
nick helped with the diaper bag.



what's not to love about singing cows? cows singing about hershey's milk chocolate?
okay, when you're stuck with that little jingle in your head a week later, it's annoying.



i still can get kisses anytime i want from the 2 youngest boys, so i like to call myself their "kiss depositor". it's much more enticing to them to say, "come deposit a kiss on my cheek" than to beg them to come kiss their mom.



we've always been partial to hershey syrup (obviously not the real packaging, but similar).
one of my favorite memories of going to my grandma zwart's house was the little can of hershey's syrup with the yellow plastic lid she'd always have in the refrigerator waiting for us.



once you get off the ride, they give you a free sample of candy.
when i was in college, it was a full size hershey bar.
now it's just a tiny sample of their newest creation (this time it was reese's bliss, kind of like a whipped peanut butter cup). and of course, you have to exit through the gift shop/cafe area.



and what would downtown hershey be without kiss shaped street lights? and streets named cocoa ave? (click on picture to enlarge if necessary).
the tower in the background is the observation tower, aka "the kissing tower", at hershey park.
(this photo courtesy of nick. no, mom, i don't drive and take pictures at the same time.
read and drive, like you? yes. take pictures? no)