legoland

The craziness of this morning was driven by my obsession with getting the best deal wherever I spend my money.  So after visits to the resort front desk, Costco, Wendy's (yes, Wendy's, I was watching TV and there was a commercial advertising free kids tickets with purchase.  Was too good to be true), and Costco again we finally figured out the best deal.  Then, get this, the people in line in front of us at Legoland hand us a bunch of coupons to get us all in for $17 a person.  All that chasing, well, to get us in line at the exact right time.

And... if we had a nickel for every time we said, "Where is Samuel?" it would have paid for all of our tickets.  Discount or no discount.  That kid was so hard to keep track of.  Legoland is just perfect for a 4 year old boy and apparently there were so many things that captured Samuel's attention.  One of the times we found him checking out the Star Wars display. 

  

See niece Ashley on those cute horses?  Well, those no longer hold Samuel's attention.  He didn't want them.  He wanted the "Dragon" instead (he was talking about this crazy knights jousting ride).  He made the height requirement just perfectly to go on all the huge rides.  And he was thrilled.  I shouldn't have been surprised at all since he is an adrenaline junkie just like his dad.  

 

Look at his face.  He was trying to ride with his hands up.

   

Ryan got these shots of Samuel driving (and any of the quality shots in this post since I only had my phone) while I was with Eva on the course for older kids.  Samuel did a u-turn where he wasn't supposed to.  At the end of the ride he collided with another kid.  He got out, straightened the car out and then hopped back in, ready to keep riding.  It is so hard to get that kid off the rides.  Motion, speed, noise... Samuel was in heaven (except when the rides ended). 

   

  

Okay, so my niece wasn't really into the ride thing.  Legoland couldn't make her as happy as that popsicle did.  This probably seems weird, but check out her tongue.  Long, right?  Like, really long.  So after seeing that, we all start comparing.  Her dad has the longest tongue that I have ever seen in real life (because I have never seen KISS in real life).  And Grandma has the shortest tongue I have ever seen.  She even had it clipped so she could stick it out even this much.  And, well, Ashley just wanted to join in all the fun.

  

Niece Ashley was cracking me up this whole trip.  I rode this boat ride thing with her where you get shot with water.  She showed me that you are just supposed to close your eyes and shoot.  Smart, right?  Here is our drenched family and then all the drenched cousins (minus the niece who was not amused by this amusement park).

 

Sweet cousins that love being with each other and Grandma with a guy made entirely of Legos.  

    

Eva.  I love that face.

Samuel and the airplane/space ship/helicopter that he made.

Rachel, Kathryn and Brenda on my favorite ride.  Races on fire engines.  It wouldn't have been my favorite if we didn't win.

Eva in the water place.

 

After Legoland the kids swam in the resort pool.  I asked Eva to swim on her back for me because it always makes me smile.  She is so good at the, "monkey, airplane, soldier" thing.  

 

"Our hot tub pool" as Samuel liked to call it was right outside our window.  

Eva doing her cousins hair.  A miracle since this girl hates for people to do her hair at all.  So cute.  I love that the cousin love each other.

vegas, cousins, dad, california...

Every other year Karl's mom invites us to their timeshare in Carlsbad, CA.  We made the horrible but economical decision to drive.  Once upon a time... before I learned of Karl's love for the-road-less-traveled (by most people for a reason) detours and before road trips meant more than 6 straight hours of handing my kids things and before I got carsick by just the thought of getting carsick... I liked road trips.  Back when it meant fun music, gas station treats, and silly games.  Yep.  I used to like them.  But, now I loath them.  I (cover your ears/eyes, kids) hate them.  I try to sleep as much as I can to wear off the car sickness and to time warp away as much of the trip as I can.  I try complaining and saying things like, "Somebody shoot me now!" and things like that but it doesn't help as much as sleeping.  

This year, to break up the long drive, we stayed in Vegas.  We stayed with Karl's cousin, David, and his family.  Our kids really hit it off and had a blast together.  And, well, we had so much fun it made the driving worth it.  Mostly.  As much as possible.

  

 They took us to see the beautiful Bellagio.  Karl's other cousin (with 14 aunts and uncles the guy has about a billion cousins), John and his family stopped by to say hi.  Emily and Eva had so much fun with Eva's camera.  They were posing all over the place and cracking us up.  I got a shot of one of the many times that Emily (who has very very tall genes) was helping Eva (who has my genes) get a better shot by picking her up so she could see higher.

 

After the Bellagio we went to a mall with the cutest playground I have ever seen.  It had kid size houses, a maze, and stage and tons more.  It was so cute.  Okay, and maybe my favorite parts were the H & M store, and the steak salad (I still crave it, I knew I would after the first bite) from the Italian restaurant. 

 

I love how Italian restaurants have the paper on the table so the kids can draw.  Makes the meal a little more enjoyable.  These are Eva and Emily's drawings.  I love Eva's spelling.... "dase" and "ros".  

 

And the next day...

Lindsay made a manly fathers day breakfast with bacon, cheesy eggs, toast.  Perfect.  

Tangent start:  It was good to see that Lindsay is a fellow non-breakfast lover.  I am almost of ashamed of my habit that appalls nutritionists all over.  I am a social breakfast eater but, really, soggy milky cereal, syrupy pancakes, greasy sausage, dry buttery toast... all before my body has had a chance to get used to the fact that I tore it out of bed?  Uh, no thanks.  "They" all say if I don't eat it, it will make me fat. But, Lindsay, happens to be the skinniest-real-live-runway-model-body person I have seen in real life.  Ha.  I love having my supposed bad habits justified.  Tangent end.

Abbi and Ryan came and picked up our kids for the second leg of the trip.  Nice, huh?  Actually it was a trade off because we were planning on taking their little one the whole way from CA to UT.  More on that later.  They got a couple shots of the trip...

 

If cartoons are on, consider my kids gone (ooh, nice rhyme!).  Tom and Jerry already sent Samuel into his pick-his-lip trance.  You can see that Eva lost her second top tooth that morning.  Bringing the tally to six.  Check out Eva's neck in the sleeping photo.  Poor thing.

 

To celebrate fathers day I had the kids draw a picture of Karl and write what they wanted and ironed it onto t-shirts (was supposed to be simple, but what I envisioned was not possible so it ended up complicated). Samuel's says, "i lovE MY DAD" and Eva's says, "my dad is nice to me."  I made Karl one that says, "my kids love me."  I didn't get a good photo of Samuel's but his portrait is so cute.

I also put this together.  In every photo they are so happy to be with their dad.  

 I would have posted it on fathers day but I just realized how I could do it two days ago.  It just came to me.  Duh.  So easy.  It is 5 min.  The first 3 min are photos of Karl and the kids, most of them I have blogged already, and the last two min are my kids made up songs and tributes to their dad. 

Thanks Kathryn and Gordon, for making the vacation possible.

Thanks, David and Lindsay, for letting us stay and being such the hosts.

Thanks, Karl, for the greatest kids ever.  

swim

Somehow with all of this cold rainy crazy weather, we have had a chance to do a ton of swimming.

My friend's pool was insanely gorgeous.  Yes, that is the whole valley that you can see while swimming.  It also helped that she heats the thing to 92 degrees.  It is amazing fun.

 

After swimming at a place like that, kind of makes our local rec center seem so ghetto.  But my kids don't mind.  They love it there.

 

We also have our annual swimming lessons with Miss Lori, who is the best swimming teacher ever.  Please note that Eva is the only one in here class that will swim without goggles.  It is especially great because two summers ago she refused to even put her face in the water the whole swimming session.

She is seriously so good at the back float.  It cracks me up.

 

So, after swimming lessons Eva was feeling super brave I guess.  She said she wanted to jump off the diving board at the rec center.  She walked over and stood in the line for the high dive.  It was cracking me up.  I probably wouldn't have thought it was so funny if I actually thought she was going to do it.  When she realized what she was doing she walked over to the "low" dive.  She walked out the middle and decided that was too high, too.  I remember feeling that way at that exact same diving board!  It is a lot higher than the one at swimming lessons.  

Oh, and Samuel likes his goggles tight.  Really, really tight.  He has me tighten them over and over.  So much so that I think his eyes get all squinty and I am worried they are going to squeeze out.  He apparently hates getting water in his goggles.  

cute chicks

One of the positives about living where we do is all the quail.  These little babies were so cute!

 

 

Samuel ran out to see them looking like this:

 

...and Eva built them a nest: