Grey Bear had a bit of a rough trip. He was put in Joshua's bed and stayed there the whole time. At home he usually gets to come out of the bed for a while. So we took a picture of him being eaten by a flower in the Mario room.
After the water park I put all of our swim shoes in the shower to try and clean them off. I finally lined them all up to dry and enjoyed how they looked...but it took several more days to get them out of the shower because they kept getting wet. (Also, while this house had a lot of cool things going for it, the showers were off. There was a "normal" door to get into the shower and it wasn't on the side of the controls. So you either had to do this huge reach around to turn on the shower or you had to stand in cold water.)
We made it to Legoland! The drive didn't include I-6 and was on the short side of the estimated time, so everyone was happy about that.
We all wore our Lego shirts...except for Isaac, who had outgrown his. So we stuck him in the middle. I find it a bit odd that I'll theme our clothes for Legoland, but not 4th of July. Priorities I guess.
We were there for rope drop! It wasn't quite as exciting as typhoon lagoon, which is rather appropriate. It was in the shade though, so everyone was a bit happier.
Ben did an amazing job figuring out a plan for our day. He told us there was a new boat ride near the back of the park that we wanted to do first, so we high-tailed it over there. (Isaac, while he doesn't enjoy eating bananas does have a small obsession with them. So here we have Isaac with his bananas.)
We get on the ride only to hear, "Ben!" It turns out that we (although especially Ben), went to Hope with the person behind us! She was a physics major that graduated a year before us. They've also been living in South America for the last 16 years, although they are having a one-year furlough in West Michigan. So it ends up being a small world.
The ride was pretty good. It had really nice theming and a good story, but it was also rather hot, even for 10am. I'm glad we did it right away.
We kept our eyes open for alligators the whole trip. The boys and I might have seen one far away while at the airport, but besides that this is the best one we saw.
While waiting for the rest of our group Isaac took Joshua for a Sea-do ride.
Joshua also wanted to be the treasure.
On to another ride! There were some adults that loved rides and some that didn't, so the kids could always decide what they wanted to do and there would be some adults to stay with them. It worked well.
While it's hard to see, Joshua has his roller coaster face on. He said this one was ok, but didn't want to ride it again.
We hit the test track. Isaac had a really slow car which was annoying. (I know they're all slow, but his was especially slow.)
Then we went to the 'biggest' roller coaster they have. The line was pretty much non-existent, which was awesome. However, Joshua didn't enjoy it at all. Probably because of the shoulder restraint - he's big enough to be safe but maybe not big enough to be comfortable. Anyway, we went on it two or three times.
As people were done with the ride (Joshua after one ride, me after two), we hung out at the toddler center nearby. It was air conditioned, which was a nice break as it was starting to get really hot.
Next up, Aqua Zone! I'll be honest, half-way through the wait (which was apparently 15 minutes but felt longer) for this I was regretting my decision. The ride let five people on at a time. A person could be a child and adult, but it was a slow, slow line. And while we were in the shade, it was hot. We finally made it, with Joshua joining Doug so that we could all fit in the same group. The ride was much more fun than I was expecting. It wasn't awesome, but I was expecting some sort of go-in-circles ride. Well, you had a bit of control with how far out you were, so there were some moments going "whee!"
The last thing we did before lunch was the ninjago ride. We all got on the same ride, although that doesn't make much difference. I scored poorly as normal, while Ben won, as normal. One of the kids will beat him one day and it'll be a life milestone.
To make sure they didn't lose their bouldering skills, they ran through a quick ninja route.
After lunch, which was easy but had no indoor seating, we slowly wandered over the water show. Isaac wanted some pictures with the giraffes to show Giraffe.
The show was nice. We got off our feet, were in the shade, and the story was fun.
Then the kids did this rope pull-up thing. (As in, they had to pull themselves up the ride and then they could drop back down.) I thought it sounded terrible, but they all seemed to love it. Isaac and Violet got paired for the second round and it was a good pairing.
We walked through miniature world. There were some squirting stations which were a lot of fun. They also added a tent to the whole area which made it much happier.
Another shooting ride! These are so fun. We did it twice, but on the second time Joshua and I didn't shoot anything and just enjoyed looking at the decorations. There's so much to look at but you barely see it when you're concentrating on hitting targets.
The last coaster. This one is fun because it has a story and a exciting but not crazy ride. Even the 5-year-old said he enjoyed it, although he didn't want to do it again.
Hmm, I wasn't expecting to see this child in the picture. I think Isaac and Marshall went in the car behind me.
It was getting close to the end of the day, but there's still a lot to tell! We went to the LEGO movie area.
We did a ride like Soarin', but instead we were on Emitt's couch. It was a cute story. After that we all split up. Isaac and Joshua along with the Parr kids did a water ride. It was fun squirting them (and being squirted), but off-loading took forever! We were trying to make the 4:30 movie and made it at 4:31...they had just started but begrudgingly let us in anyway.
As we were (slowly) leaving we hit Ben's happy place, a pick-a-brick wall. They had some good stuff; we found some good pieces.
But then! we found this random bin of pieces, and it must have been pieces from a build that was taken apart. We found some awesome new colors and rare (for our collection) pieces! I wish we had seen it earlier, but it was a bit off to the side.
Dinner was Italian night. While you can't see it in the picture, I had brought my travel black-out curtains. They came in useful! I put one up in our room...it wasn't too bad but it was brighter in the morning than I wanted. The other one I brought downstairs because there were no blinds, and at dinner time the sun shone right in the windows and made the table annoying to sit at.
This is an odd picture to include, I know. Two years ago the microwave in Tulsa was ...difficult. This microwave reminded Heather and I of that microwave and I think we both had some PTSD over the thing. However, I'd like to say that while this microwave looked similar, it was intuitive on how to use it and everyone figured it out without help. It popped the popcorn as expected.
I think the kids watched a LEGO movie, to stay on theme.
While the kids watched their movie, we played poker. I was out pretty quickly. Usually I play more conservatively, but I didn't feel like it. However, my cards also weren't the best.
After the movie was done Greta passed out some presents to all the adults. Everyone* was confused because where did the kid get the presents? What are they?
*Except me. I got them and had Greta hand them out for maximum confusion. We talk a lot about work on our biweekly chats and sometimes work is depressing.
