Trip to Cali: Legoland Day 1

It has taken me way too long to get these up! Sorry!

After our arrival on Sunday evening our plan was to spend the next day at Legoland. Monday morning dawned bright and beautiful, and we were all pretty excited to get there.

Walking up to Legoland for our first day...

 I started taking pictures right away. First we saw Ninjago world...

Aric and Alex with Jay from Ninjago

 We were excited to see all the cool LEGO structures.

Next up was Zane...

Alex with Zane from Ninjago

Aric with Zane from Ninjago

Our 2nd ride of the 1st day was the bionicle tea cups. I can't remember what the exact name of the ride is, but that's what it was like.

More cool LEGO structures...

Alex decided he wanted to do the frog jump ride:

As we made our way through we came to the Knights and Castles area. We found a LEGO Nexo Knight guy...

 This was a fun "boat school" ride...

April and Alex together.

Aric

Aaron

 Next up was driving school...

And firefighting...

Some cool LEGO wolves running in a pack...

 A fun character meet and greet with a hot dog minifig...

At Legoland they have minifigure trading all throughout the park. If you find a worker who has minifigs to trade, and you have a minifig that you want to trade you can do so. Aric traded for this guy the first day. This became a favorite activity all three days at the park.

We went to the "girl" part of Legoland, Friends. Alex was totally all for riding the carousel there. Aric was not so much. 

He also enjoyed a kiddie train ride as well...

I spied this tree with what looks like branches going down to to the ground to make more roots. I thought it was really interesting. I want to look up more about it.

As part of a silly joke the boys sat with the friends Lego characters...

Riding the water jet things. Can't remember what they are called...

The Taj "masmall"...

 LEGO mount rushmore...

We made it back around to Ninjago area by the afternoon, so more pictures with Ninjago creatures...

Lego Miniland:

All the buildings and scenes made out of LEGOs were pretty cool.

A scene from Star Wars, I believe...

Wookie from StarWars...

A storybook ride. Snow White...

That's all the pictures from Day 1. I believe we had dinner at In-n-Out and then went back to the hotel to get ready for Day 2 with the cousins.

Trip to California: 2 day drive down

Our family trip down to California was so fun, and I tried to document as much of it as I could. So, I will be doing several posts of all our adventures at Legoland, and other fun places we stopped at. I plan to go in chronological order as much as possible, so here's the beginning!

We started our drive early morning on Saturday April 7th. Our plan was to drive about halfway to Sacramento and stop for the night to rest. The kids were way more excited than they look in this picture.

It was beautiful all the way down.

We had reservations at a Best Western Hotel that we've stayed in before, so the kids knew that there was a pool. They wanted to get in the pool as soon as we got there.

...Until the frogs were discovered. Then no one wanted to be in the water except Alex.

 He happily played in the water even though the frogs kept jumping back in.

 It was completely clear, and only a little chilly. This is the hotel we were at for the night.

The next morning we got up, had the free breakfast at the hotel, and were on our way. It was another beautiful sunny day. We pass so many fields, farms, and orchards between Oregon and southern California.

 But, mostly it just looks like this in CA. We were getting closer to our destination!

We decided to stop for dinner about a half hour before we arrived at our hotel in Carlsbad because everyone really wanted Red Robin. Our stop ended up being at the Irvine Spectrum Center, a huge outdoor mall. It was our first dose of the busyness of So. CA. Alex played clapping games with Dad while we waited for our table.

After dinner we walked through the mall to the other side where there was a Target to grab a few things. They had a ferris wheel! It was huge.

That is all of the pictures I got on the first day.

We arrived at our hotel in Carlsbad. The one we'd be staying at for 5 nights. Our longest stay. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of it, but the reservation I made through priceline put too many people in this particular room, so our room was super small. We only had 2 queen beds. They didn't have anything available to put us in a bigger room. It was a pretty stressful evening when we arrived. So, Dad and Aaron went to Walmart, and found a sleeping bag so a kid could use it on the floor. Fortunately we brought Alex's sleeping bag with us, so he was already set. We had to make it work in that tiny room all week, and we did. We were just glad they let us stay in that tiny room with too many people! Oh, and I don't think I'll ever use priceline again. Very disappointed, they could do nothing for us. I learned my lesson to just book directly through the hotel.

That wraps up our journey down there. Next up, our first day at LEGOland.