School is out!

We had a fun school year!  Daniel really enjoyed his second grade class.  He loved his teachers, and he had some great friends in his class.

Benjamin liked being with the big kids at the elementary school, but he was sadly disappointed to find that kindergarteners don't get to stay for lunch.  But he will next year.

Here are the highlights from Benjamin's last few weeks of school:

Zoo Program:

 
Zoo Field Trip:
Yes, it was cold enough to need a coat.

In fact, it was so wet that they closed the train.  At least they gave the kids tickets to the merry go round instead.

And let's not forget kindergarten graduation.  Here he is with his adorable cousin Maddie:

Soccer

Where did spring go?  School will be out in just a few days.  As Daniel would say, "The kids have the single-digit fidgets."  Oh, wait.  I know where spring went.  We spent most of it playing/watching soccer.  We had games each night, from Tuesday to Friday, for several weeks. 

Benjamin is trying to smile, but this was the kind of face we saw at most of the games.  Trying to enjoy being outside when it was terrible weather.  We had games in rain, snow, and hail.  Oh, and don't forget the wind.  Benjamin was the goalie during one game when the goal blew over on him!  He was trapped under the net until Wayne put the goal back up.  Wayne held the goal in place for the rest of the game.  Thankfully, Benjamin wasn't hurt (the frames are metal), but he was a little scared whenever it was his turn to be goalie for the rest of the season.

Daniel enjoyed his soccer season.  He had a really fun team.  This picture is with his beautiful Aunt Wendy.  She was so sweet to come and cheer him on at his game.

Missing body parts

Benjamin wants everyone to know that he lost his first tooth on May 1st.

The tooth fairy left him a gold dollar under his pillow.  

Benjamin says that the tooth fairy takes all of the teeth and grinds them up to make wings for fairies.

And this next part is for anyone who hasn't seen me in the past  couple of weeks (and didn't notice the difference in the Disneyland pictures).  I'm now missing 11 inches of hair.  But considering how fast my hair grows, I'm not too worried about it.  I donated my ponytail to Locks of Love again.

Finally made it to Disneyland

I don't have much to say about Disneyland itself.  The weather was a little cool and rainy, but all that meant was that the park wasn't very crowded.  It was awesome, as always.  I will offer a little travel advice.  On our first day, we used our "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" passes.  I'll take a minute to explain how that works.  When you finish the program, you print off your vouchers.  Bring I.D. to Disneyland for each person with a voucher.  For kids, that means birth certificates.  An adult can use a driver's license.  If you are going for one day, just take all of that to the ticket booths outside Disneyland, and they will get you your passes.  If you're like us and want three-day passes, then you do everything the same way, but you turn around and trade those tickets in for three-day Park Hopper passes.  You get the gate price of your one day ticket ($62 for kids, $72 for adults) credited toward the gate cost of three day passes ($174, $204).  It's a pretty good discount.  But of course, that only works for people who already did their "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" project because they aren't letting people sign up anymore.

We spent the first day at Disneyland with just our immediate family.  Then Wayne's parents, brother (and wife and kids), sisters, and brother-in-law met up with us.  It's more fun to go to Disneyland with lots of relatives.  I always recommend taking along grandparents if you are going to Disneyland, especially with little kids.  You can trade off watching kids and riding the more exciting rides.  Of course, my kids can and do ride everything.  But when Daniel was worn out on the third day (and I think he got a touch of food poisoning or something) and needed to rest in our hotel room for a few hours, it was great to have Wayne's sister Wendy trade off staying with him so that I could go back to the park for a while.  (Another reason to stay right across the street from Disneyland.)  And soon he felt better and came back for more roller coaster fun.

Monday in SoCal

As promised, here is the next post on our trip.  That Monday, we went to Legoland!  Legoland is about an hour south of Anaheim, in Carlsbad.  This was our second trip to Legoland.  People keep asking me about Legoland because it's not nearly as well known as Disneyland.  So, here's my review.  Legoland is really fun for boys from about ages 5-10, especially if they like legos and/or theme parks.  I suppose it could be fun for girls who really like legos, but it's obviously geared more toward boys.  It's divided into play areas with themes like pirates, castles, adventures, etc.  There are lots of rides and playgrounds.  And there are tons of things built out of legos.  There is an area called "Mini Land" that has cities from across the U.S. replicated in legos.  There was even a lego Mount Rushmore.  We were at Legoland from 10 a.m. to about 5 p.m., and we had time to visit most of the park.  The rides are very tame.  Like kids can ride many of them without grownups.  There are a few roller coasters, but nothing too exciting.  Legoland tickets are expensive, but  there are discount tickets available at places like Costco.  We got our tickets through a program Wayne's office has membership in, called "Ticketsatwork."  And be warned that the food is crazy expensive at Legoland.  It's more expensive than Disneyland!  We ate the continental breakfast at our hotel and only had lunch at Legoland.

 

This is Benjamin riding the Kid Power Towers with me.  A lot of rides are  interactive.  On this one, you use the rope to pull yourselves to the top of the tower and then let go to drop to the bottom.  Obviously, you aren't really lifting your own weight.  But you do control the speed.  Very fun.

 

Another ride my boys really enjoyed was the driving school.  I think you have to be at least 6 to drive these cars.  But, unlike other cars I've seen at amusement parks, these cars aren't stuck to a track.  The kids are supposed to drive around all of the roads, following traffic signals and trying not to crash into the other cars.  I was relieved to see that my kids were pretty good drivers.  If anything, they were overly cautious. 

Legoland has several water attractions.  Many people wear their swimsuits or bring clothes to change into.  For instance, there is a pirate playground that has waterslides.  Another fun thing at Legoland is that several of the rides have water cannons for people to shoot at the riders.   Here's Daniel  getting sprayed on one of those rides.  Good thing it was a pretty warm day when we were there.

 

 

After Legoland, we headed south to a beach where we met up with Mark and Alicia and their cute kids.  They are some friends of ours that we met when we were newlyweds at BYU.  It was so much fun to see them.  And we went to a very cool beach where you could see seals, sea lions, and all sorts of birds (which was Daniel's favorite part).  We got some good video, but it was getting too dark for my camera to take very good pictures.  So I'll just give you this one, and Wayne will have to get me some stills from the video later: