Legoland

Summer vacation is upon us!  The last day of school for the bigger kids was on May 23rd, and on May 24th we made plans to head to Legoland California (near San Diego).  The countdown to Legoland seemed to commence the minute we made the plans (back in February or so)...you could totally tell that the kids were so excited!

Backing up a little, the end of the school year was filled with all sorts of things.  Kaitlyn finished kindergarten, which totally doesn't seem possible!  She's learned so much in the past year, and she's reading just as well as the boys sometimes.  Kaitlyn had a new classmate start midyear as well, and it turns out that classmate and new friend lives right across the street from us.  Isabella has come to play a few times and Kaitlyn (and Laurel, too), has been thrilled to have a playmate.  It's going to be a hard first month of summer since Isabella is going to be at her grandparents for a month or so.  Hopefully at least one of Kaitlyn's friends is in her first grade class with her (either Bella, Millie or Audrey are her little BFF's).

Laurel is starting preschool at Milenio in the fall, so she's done with daycare.  She figured out the potty stuff in pretty short order when she decided one day that she didn't want diapers anymore.  So, underpants it was!  She's really the first of our kids to get really upset at the mention of diapers or pull-ups.

Jared finished 2nd grade and he gets so very attached to his teachers sometimes.  He was sobbing and crying so hard on the last day of school.

And Daniel finished 5th grade and he's on to middle school!

Okay, onto Legoland.  We booked 7 nights at the Legoland hotel, which is pretty awesome for us because it's right at the entrance to the park (yay!), and the room is perfect!  We got the "adventure" themed room and it sleeps up to 7 people.  Again...perfect!  Friday was the first day here and everyone was pretty tired after the long drive.  We didn't make it out of the house till almost noon, so we didn't get to the hotel until dinner time.

Saturday was the first full day...and we started off with our free breakfast buffet (yum!), and headed into the park a little early (another perk of staying at the hotel).  First ride was "Coastersaurus" which was pretty mild.  All of us could go on it, so we did!  The park opened to the general public soon after, so the line got much longer right after we got off (no repeat rides that day!).  We did a few more rides, including one of the splashdown boat rides...Kaitlyn did NOT like that, and made her dislike known for at least the next 45 minutes or so.  We also "upgraded" our passes to annual ones so that instead of 2 days in the park, we could go in and out for the whole remainder of the week.

So far, we've stayed at the hotel and at the park...it's really a resort-y type experience...and kind of nice not to really go anywhere.  Swimming pool...check.  Rides...check.  Lots of Lego...YES.  One night Daniel even won a contest ("Most Creative") for building an animal out of Legos...he wanted to build a Mountain Bluebird...the state bird of Nevada, since that's what he had done a project on for school a few weeks earlier.  It's been a little chillier than we anticipated (and even ended up buying sweatshirts!), but that's not totally unwelcome.

Anyway...hopefully I'll post pictures soon!