Legoland

On June 26th we headed to Legoland. William is an absolute Lego fanatic and couldn't spend enough time at Legoland. It's actually my favorite theme park, too. It's more about the creativity-factor than the thrill-factor, and that's more my style. I'm not fond of being scared and I'm afraid of heights, so little cute lego-themed rides and attractions are just right for me. Our group included Grandma Dianne, Cory and Ang Killpack and their kids - Jovin, Mayer, Pearce, and Tjay - and, of course, our family.

 

Kip followed the smart-amusement-park-goer rule to head straight to the back of the park and work to the front, so we started with the driving courses.

 

William still had a long wait for the older-kid course, but the young drivers got to go right away.

 

Becca rode the helicopter ride while waiting for William to finish his drive.


We rented strollers so that 6 of the 7 kids could ride through the park. Of course, that meant that 4 of the 5 adults in our party had to push. But it was tons better than carrying or dragging tired kids around for mile after mile.


At the end of the day, the kids hung out in Duplo Land and Becca and Pearce managed to get pretty wet.

San Diego - Seaworld

 

After school got out for the summer, we hopped on a plane and headed to San Diego to visit Kip's brother and his family who were temporarily living there. We spent our first day there at Seaworld. For some reason we didn't think about sunblock until we arrived at the park. I had a sample pack with me and covered parts of myself and the kids. We all ended up with areas of sunburn, except Kip who had passed up on the sunblock and was fried. We went to a Shamu show and walked around to see some of the animals. The kids really enjoyed it, once I bought William some sunglasses.

 

 

Grandma

In case any of you were wondering about the fact that Grandma was mentioned in the last post but not included in the pictures, I thought I would post a photo as proof that she was there.

Disney

Grandma came to Florida to join us and we all went to DisneyWorld Saturday the 13th and again on Tuesday the 16th. Lines were a little worse than at Universal and SeaWorld, but not as bad as I expected. Of course, we only rode kid-friendly rides, so things may have been worse on rides popular with older people. The weather was hot, but we generally stayed in the shade. I was surprised that Disney didn't have many fans. Universal and SeaWorld had fans with water-misters that were incredibly refreshing. There weren't anything like that at Disney. If you were lucky, you waited in line for 30-60 minutes in the shade. If not, you were in the sun. No fans. I thought that was a little lame. If the other parks provided fans and sometimes even TV's, why did Disney just make you stand in the hot sun?


But enough complaining. It really was fun. We forced the kids to do the Peter Pan ride. They ended up kind of liking it. Then we rewarded them with the Small World ride. They loved that. Anna liked the Dumbo ride, but the line was the worst of our whole trip. At least an hour long with no fans and no shade for the last 15 minutes. I almost got Anna through the line to meet the princesses, but when I refused to hold her for the 15 minute wait, she decided she didn't want to see the princesses after all.


We went to Epcot on Tuesday. It was fun. We went to the funny show and Kip got to be part of it - putting hook&loop diapers on dollies. He did great. The kids liked the Nemo ride. They had to be forced to leave the aquarium at the end.

Reunion in Utah - Snow Canyon

On Saturday April 25th, our first full day of reunion, we headed to beautiful Snow Canyon. The red rocks and sand were stunning. The kids had a blast playing at the red sand dunes.




Kip took William with Grandma, Chad, Angie and Abby on a hike of the Butterfly trail. They had a great time walking and shooting immaginary aliens per William's request.

Becca's Blessing

Baby Rebecca got blessed in church on the 30th of March. Her Grandma was able to come spend some time with us for the event. It was nice to have her here, even just for the weekend. We thought we'd show her a good time, Oregon-style, so that she would see it was better in Oregon than in those HOT states her other kids live in. To accomplish this, we made sure it rained or hailed the entire time she visited and that the roof of the theater where we saw "Go Dog Go" performed on Saturday afternoon leaked the aforementioned rain onto our heads as we enjoyed the performance.

Becca did some singing for Grandma.

She sure loves her daddy.

Our little diva.

Becca was very upset when she learned Grandma had to go back home.

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - Zoo Lights

We waited until Friday night, the 28th of December, to visit the Zoo Lights because it wasn't supposed to rain as much then. It was very cold, but it didn't rain during the first part of our tour. We appreciated that.

We all enjoyed a ride on the zoo train.

And the lights really were very pretty.

Grandma was helpful and pushed Anna in our friend's stroller when their little boy didn't want to be in it.

And here's the family on the way out next to the "Bremen Town Musicians". Anna may be crying in this picture...

We really enjoyed having Grandma and Aunt Tasha with us. We hope they can come again!

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - the Children's Museum

The second day of their visit (December 27th), we took Tasha and Grandma to the Chrildren's Museum. Anna wasn't very thrilled with her penguin costume.

Kip, on the other hand, really got into the raccoon puppets.

Using our height and number advantage, we managed to build a complete foam block archway - which promptly fell down. But we heard from some other museum attendees that no one else had been able to do it at all, so we felt better.

And Grandma and William had fun building earthquake-proof block structures together.

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - at home

We were all excited to have Grandma and Aunt Tasha visit after Christmas. Anna was thrilled to get yet another pink dress AND a pink dress-up princess dress!

William was thrilled to show Grandma how much he loves playing the Game Cube games she sent him.

Everyone enjoyed playing Hullabaloo together.

And Kristin may someday forgive Grandma for taking her picture while super prego. Luckily, it only shows her from the front!