legoland

Well, this week was our (somewhat) long anticipated trip to LegoLand, just north of San Diego. We'd originally planned on driving up on Tuesday (the 12th), enjoying the park on Tuesday and Wednesday, and heading for home on Thursday with tired, but happy children.

Enter reality. After church on Sunday, I thought I'd better check on the park's opening hours (there was some question of whether it would be better to go on Tuesday-Wednesday or Wednesday-Thursday). Andy was happily concocting a quick (but heavenly and under appreciated) pasta when I discovered the bad news. Apparently, LegoLand is not open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays unless it's a holiday (busy) week or the summer (busy). This is not a busy week. Ouch.

Thus ensues some hasty mental calendaring (is this a word? Can I make one up to describe the process of feverish thinking out days, calculating when the house must be cleaned for guests, making a cost/benefit analysis on canceling the babysitter--a tough one!?). We rapidly decide that we cannot go for Thursday and Friday. Delaying the trip for a week is possible, but entails disappointing small children and causing pre holiday stress. Plus there will be more people. Andy suggests dropping everything (not the pasta) and leaving right now and just having Monday. Robin wonders if we can get out of town fast enough to have some time there on Sunday. The pasta is, unfortunately, inhaled, and we begin a rapid packing sequence. We made it out of town about 2pm and headed south. We made it to LegoLand in time to enjoy the last hour of the day at the park (hooray!). We had a great time in just that one hour.

Thanks, Amy, for the dinner recommendation: Pizza Port was great! We overate but it was worth it.

Not sure if everyone was just wound up or what, but no one slept well Sunday night. That didn't stop us from having a great day on Monday, though. Attendance was amazingly low at the park, so we rode all the rides we wanted, multiple times, often without even having to get out of the car! Michael and Caroline are just about the perfect age for the park--able to ride all the rides and Michael was able to ride many without an adult (freeing the adult present to ride with Caroline and the other one to hang with Elanor). The models all around the park are really incredible. The only place we didn't get to spend much time was MiniLand, which has models of buildings all over the world, like the new Freedom Tower and the Taj Mahal. The kids were not as thrilled with it as the parents. However, we certainly got our money's worth of enjoyment by going on a slow day. For once, the kids even got to visit the souvenir shop (I am notoriously stingy about buying souvenirs for them): thanks to Uncle John, they got to pick out their own Christmas presents.

The kids were pretty tired on the way home. We even had to wake them up to eat! Although our trip was shorter than we'd planned, it was probably one of the most fun days we've spent as a family. And I love that we went on a weekday when everyone else was doing something productive!