Day 1: Legoland!

Here's how the train of thought went for the vacation from which we just returned:  Our 10th anniversary is coming up in November.  Who wants to celebrate 10 years in November?  November is Thanksgiving time, which is always spent with family.  Let's go some place this summer.  Hawaii would be nice, but we'd have to find a babysitter for 4 children for at least 5 days.  Who would watch our children for that long?  Would they survive?  (the sitter or the children?)  Let's go some place...we'll take the children with us.  We don't want an airplane ride with four children...where can we go without getting on an airplane, and without driving 17 days like we did last summer?

Let's go to San Diego!  It's a two-hour drive and there are lots of things to see and do.  First day:  Legoland!  We had no idea what Legoland was like.  We loved the little cities made of Legos...here's Las Vegas.

Our kids thought Las Vegas was cool, even though they didn't recognize the buildings.

  

The capitol was even better!

Natalie was very enthralled with Bob the Builder...she is still talking about it, six days later!

Tom and Konrad on the wave rider (Lukas in the back).

The couple beside me on land were pushing buttons to spray the car in front of Tom and Konrad, but they kept missing and getting Tom and Konrad instead!

Lukas didn't want to go on at first, then LOVED it!

Natalie and me waiting our turn to ride.

Now Lukas is trying to hit us with water!

Dominik and I rode this airplane ride (one of the few rides that he could ride) while Tom took the other kids on a spinning ride.  When the other kids caught up with us, they wanted to go on the airplane ride too, but the wait was too long.

We packed a lunch every day.  Yes, it saved a lot of money, but also because it was more predictable what food we could get that everyone would eat, and have enough to eat, without standing in line.  And we ate a lot of food with all the walking we did (I also packed snacks).  At Legoland we sat on the grass outside the park; at the other "places" we went, they let us bring food in.

Natalie's enjoying squirting people on the other side!

A sign of things to come?

Here's another ride that Dominik could ride...Tom took him on the teeny weeny train.

This ride required the occupants to pull themselves up (there must be many pulleys inside).  Lukas complained that it was hard to pull up both him and Konrad (since Konrad wasn't helping).

Then Lukas rode again by himself and saw that it wasn't much different (except this time Konrad wasn't there to push the button to go down--again and again--before they got to the top).

Tom and Natalie are going to ride now!

At the top, coming down!

 

We walked ACROSS the park to visit a LEGO Technic store (which turned out to not be as advertised), but then we were near the airplane ride again, and the wait was short, so we rode again!

 Lukas and Natalie rode in front of Konrad, Dominik and me.

Whew!  We were exhausted after the first day.  But the kids still remember Legoland, even after all the other "places" we went...stay tuned to find out what happens next!