Spoiling the Children Rotten in April Part 2

Summer could not believe we'd do theme parks on back to back weekends. During the celebration of Laura's birthday she'd definitely had that going to Legoland look in her eye. So we headed South to Carlsbad. Both kids wasted no time hopping right into the action. There were so many cool lego structures it was hard to digest them all. It was very nice of the lego engineers to build one specifically for Bill's visit. After getting a taste of lego land on Friday, there was no way we were going to lock ourselves in our hotel room and not come back the next day. If only I still had the mini-lego version of this horse, I'd have truly finished the castle set that Ging-Ging and Pops have been saving in their basement for 30+ years. Of course you know where stealing legos from legoland will get you. Speaking of things that take you back, the old rag slide race felt a lot like Kings Island. As with all good things our month of Theme Parks finally had to come to an end, so we packed up and flew back to LA. Don't worry, we haven't run out of blog excitement yet, as the big Jordan/Orscheln wedding pics are soon to be making an appearance in this space.

Spoiling the Children Rotten in April Part 1

I remember when I was little and they used to run commercials for Disneyworld. These commercials always ended up with a family getting uninterrupted time with key Disney characters without a single other person in the shot. This never meshed with my experience of going to Disneyworld, where every character was mobbed by throngs of drooling, sweaty children anytime they dared to set foot in the park. Perhaps it's just faulty memory, but in one of the rare acts of civil behavior, people really give you more space with the characters, as you'll see in the pictures below. Of course, in this particular instance it helps that we were walking into the park an hour early and Minnie was just starting her shift. As if a weekend at Disneyland wasn't exciting enough, we also had the Jordan family's resident Disney obsessive Aunt Caroline in town for the weekend. Ging Ging's presence ensured it would be way more fun than tractor tipping. Going at midafternoon on Friday during the spring made the waits that much more bearable. Traffic was much worse here than it had been on the way down. Saturday started early with multiple rounds of Dumbo. That was more dizziness than Laura could take, so she had to tag out for wilder rides like the carousel. It wouldn't be til later in the year that our obsession with Jake would begin, but Carson appeared ready to outwit the plans of Captain Hook and Smee. I don't think I ever realized that eeyore was one of Caroline's favorite Disney characters, but the kids made sure she got to spend some quality time with him. As if we hadn't seen enough characters, we got one last visit with the big cheese himself before finally calling it a day on Saturday. Our solid efforts to spoil our kids rotten in April were just getting started, as next week brought a trip even further south to Legoland.