Thursday the down day...and the grand finale: Legoland. In two parts.

Thursday we decided to take a down day. It was super lazy. We read books, watched TV, the kids played the wii. Ridiculously lazy until about noon. We then drug ourselves out of the house for lunch and a quick shopping trip. (I needed jeans).

Then that evening Ed and his wife Cheryl invited us to dinner at their home. It was pretty far north of where we were, so we picked up Jen on our way out of town and arrived around 6:30. They have a beautiful home and outdoor kitchen. And a bocce court that was amazing. I didn't take any pictures, but Shawn got a few on his phone, so I will add them in later if I can get them.

We played a quick game of girls against boys and Jeff and Shawn wandered off and so we won. Evan was not impressed with his team needing another beer. 

They also have a small orchard of orange trees on their property, and we went orange picking, and the kids loved that. Matt was there and he taught them how to find the ripe oranges by taste test and how to pick them.

Ed grilled tri tip for dinner and Cheryl set out rolls and salads, and made brownies and cookies for dessert. It was a great night, great company and a nice end to our relaxing day.

Friday kicked off day one of two to lego land. This was what Evan had been waiting for. We arrived really early and so the park let us in, but nothing was open except the cafe and the two stores. We got muffins and coffee and juice and sat around waiting. We wandered a little and a woman near by told us about Mind Storms, a robotics adventure that you have to sign up for. We headed that way and got the last spot for the day. Crazy.

After that we walked over to see the giant x-wing display. I think Shawn told me it weighs 4500lbs. It was incredible. It is made entirely out of Legos.
Front: 

 Back:

Then it was finally time for the rides!
Evan was very excited, even waiting in line. 

I loved this King Tut. 

 The kids waiting for another ride.

 

Some of the rides were a little young for these two, but they did them anyway. 

 Cool lego spider!

This is not made out of lego, but it's a pig, and in minecraft apparently someone told Evan they are called "Jeffreys" so now that's what he calls pigs. So here he is posing with a Jeffrey.

 This was in some corny maze/find the key thing we did. But I thought the wolves were cool.

 These are archaeologists.

 We had lunch after this and then it was time to go to the Mind Storm activity. Lunch was a really tasty pizza, I was really happy they had decent food, since we had to be there for two full days.

We saw these guys on our way and I had to make the kids stop and take a picture with the Mariachis!

Mind Storm was pretty cool, the kids had to program a robot to perform tasks. They were given a series of missions and then they were pretty much left to their own devices to figure out how to make it happen.
Getting directions: 

 Studying the map:

 

Programming: 

 

 Getting ready to try it out:

 watching to see if they did it right:

 

 It was a successful mission! And look how cute this little robot is!

 After that we went on a little boat tour. It started off a little rough when I saw the sign that said "No drinks on ride" and put the kids rootbeer in my bag. Can you see where this is going? Yeah. The lid was not sealed, and it dumped all over my lap and the floor and all of my stuff. I was scrambling to grab all electronic devices out of it and lucky for me I caught it in time! But I was soaked. Probably a cup of liquid spilled into my bag and soaked through. Yuck. And so sticky! I still managed to snap some pics on our ride, and we got a plastic bag from one of the stores to put my wet drippy bag in for the rest of the day. So no big deal, but I was a little cranky about it for a few minutes. I got over it pretty fast.


Lego turtles!

 This elephant shot water out of it's trunk. Kind of fun.

 mini replicas were kind of neat too see.

 New York city skyline took over 2 million lego pieces. Fun little fact.

   
Lucky we took this fun pic of Evan with Darth Maul on day one, because on day two there was a huge line to take a pic with him! 

I will put day two in a new post. Have to get some stuff done today, that does not involve sitting here at my desk blogging!