San Diego - Legoland

Our kids had been begging to go to Legoland for months, and their pleas only became more insistent after their cousins went in March and brought home brochures with slick colorful pictures showing how totally awesome it is.  We hemmed and hawed about it since our kids are not big ride riders, and we finally told them no.  But...secretly, we planned a surprise trip for the day school ended.  We planned to have our carpets cleaned while we were gone, so the whole house was crazy and the kids didn't even notice me packing.  Here we are telling them we were leaving.  This was minutes before we got in the car and left: 

Katie turned out to be much more adventurous than we had anticipated, although she is still not a fan of the dark rides (they are really loud and she is very sensitive to noise).  She rode all the scariest rides Legoland had to offer, and Isaiah rode most all of them as well.  We were really impressed with how tailored the park is to young families. It was clean and fun, with no pushy, vulgar behavior because there really wasn't anything to cater to anyone over the age of 12. 

Some things that made our time at Legoland so much better:

The sling.  Lily usually rides in a hip carry, but here she had fallen asleep and I slid her down across my front to be a bit more comfy.  It is so nice to be able to hold her without killing my arms (she likes to be held a lot). 

The stroller.  We have a Joovy Caboose and it is awesome for the stage we are at.  I do wish it could recline more and be a bit more comfy for sleeping, but it is so nice to have a stroller that can fit more than one, and that an older child can hop on and off of easily.  For as fussy and needy as Lily is, she did amazingly well sitting around all day in the stroller or sling.  She could only go on a couple of things, and where she was at the roll-all-over-the-floor stage, I was worried that she would be going nuts not getting down on the floor to play. 

The monkey.  I was always a bit critical of moms who leashed their children...until I had Max.  Literally losing him in a public place once a week makes me paranoid about going to a theme park.  But he did pretty well between the monkey and the stroller, and it was simple to clip him out to go on rides. (By the way, he loves his monkey, so that also makes me feel a little better leashing him.) 

We didn't get pictures of some of our favorite rides, but here are pictures of lots of the things we enjoyed. 

If you go to Legoland, make sure you check out the water park.  We didn't spend much time there because it was cold and we were more interested in other things, but if you do go, remember your towels!  We didn't and were glad that there was a "family dryer."  It did a pretty good job and was pretty warm, but towels would have been nicer!