Vacation day one: Lego Land!

My cast of characters with their favorite character....Lego style!!=0)
I spy a Lamb kid...I love this picture!=0)
Adree and Seth cooling off....
My kids (and many, many others...) cooling off at "Swabby's Deck" in the late afternoon
Of course, Adree was the only one that wanted her face painted!
Dolphins are her favorite!=0)
Adree scrambling up a palm tree in the "Adventure Zone"...no fear at all!
Adree, Seth, and Drake racing down the slides...
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this ride was...it just shook you a lot!=0)
Lee and the kids waving in line at the "Test Track" a Lego race car
that drove around in the sky...
Seth (red hat) and Drake (black hat) watching the Lego characters move in Mini-Land
Me and the resident short people with the Lego Land tourist
Drake had the little Lego man he usually carries in his pocket stuck to the tourist's hat...
yes, most things in the park were made out of Legos!
All of us riding on the Dragon ride, notice Seth's little hands up in the air! No
fear at all! Adree either!

As you can see from all the pictures, we spent most of this week in So. Cal. on vacation!=0) This year Lee promised Drake that if he was able to improve his grades, he would take everyone to Lego Land! Drake struggled most of the school year last year. Actually, it was what alerted us to take a closer look at what the underlying issue may be. I'll blog more about this later though and Drake was able to show us he was willing to try harder and earned a trip to Lego Land. Drake is absolutely obsessed with Legos and we knew this would be a great fun trip!=0) It was!
Sunday we drove to So. Cal., I wish I had been more alert on when we were leaving and insisted we go Monday through Thurs. instead. We sat in traffic with all the other people going back to Cali from Vegas...ALL THE WAY FROM VEGAS TO BARSTOW!! Anyway, once we got past Barstow the rest of the trip was really quite lovely! We took the 215 which turns back into the 15 until we were able to take Coast Hwy route 76, thank you to Tom Tom for taking us that way, the drive was beautiful along cliffs and fruit stands and cool coastal air all the way to our hotel in Oceanside. I lived in Cali myself for a couple of years, but had never been further south on the 15 than Temecula...Wow! I missed out!=0) I've been to the beach many times in Orange County but, really the way to go is in Oceanside! Our hotel was just a few blocks from the beach and we slept with the window open (on the third floor) and enjoyed sleeping in the ocean air, it was heavenly!=0)
Monday we got up and going stopped at Wal-Mart to get our food and hopped the freeway for a 15 min. drive to Carlsbad to Lego Land. If you haven't been, let me be the first to recommend it for kids 10-12 and under. The first question out of Drake's mouth was directed at the ticket taker, he had to know if her name tag was really made out of Legos...it was! It was great family fun!=0) All the rides and attractions were geared toward families to enjoy together!=0) Seth (who's 6 and pretty little for his age) was able to ride on every single ride as long as he had an adult with him and Drake and Adree were tall enough to ride all the rides by themselves if they had wanted! So, the whole family was able to take part, We actually enjoy Lagoon as well, but not all of the kids are big enough to ride all the rides. This was a great opportunity for us all to enjoy having fun together! All together I think we spent 7 hrs in the park and the kids could have gone longer, we needed to feed Lee though, so we packed up and left.=0) If you looked at the pictures, take a look at Drake...notice he is smiling in almost every picture, I think he had a good time!=0) Just think, a whole entire place made out of Legos...and it was!=0)