Last week, we embarked upon our first ever flying vacation as a family of SIX. We normally drive, and our trips resemble that famous Grizwold adventure to Wally World. We also normally take our 1 yr old lab, who is our best traveler, including Mom & Dad, hands down. To say that a 1 yr old lab is the best behaved of our bunch is a little sad. Actually, it is more that “Marshmallow” is very mellow in the car, and not so much that our children are terrible, though we all have our moments, except the dog it seems (knock wood). Anyway, we were destined for Legoland this Spring Break, as our 6 yr old is a lego building maniac, and has been asking for this for a while, and as the middle child, he has rarely gotten to choose destination. Dad and Anthony were pushing for a Florida Disney trip… “and by the way, we could take in some baseball Spring Training, since we are there.” I insisted that middle guy gets his pick this time. Our life cannot revolve around baseball all the time. Can it? And since I am the travel agent, I also had some pull. We boarded late night Thursday flights both ways to get the best price – w/ 6 passengers, we need every angle we can find. Our 4 yr old set off the metal detector with his cargo shorts that had too many zippers, and was body searched which was scarey for him for a moment, and most of our bags were in need of security search for some reason, because we don’t travel often and are not well versed on current carry on procedures. The people behind us must have loved us! Dad tried to bring juiceboxes and Mom forgot to remove the nail polish from purse (which I obviously never use anyway but keep handy just in case? Don’t ask? It never happens, but I keep dreaming). Though our security process may have started out like the Grizwolds, our air adventures were uneventful, except for the complicated security process. Our Perfect Vacation House: We arrived in Los Angeles and drove to Carlsbad, where we had the best vacation rental home we could have hoped for, for our crew. It was a 3 bedroom home with a pool, and the pool even had a locking, motorized cover that also provided solar heat. We are always nervous about renting a place with a pool, since we still have one child who doesn’t swim well. This house was nice, great kitchen, enough sleeping, and as a bonus, we scored a closet full of toys that were perfect for our kids ages. There were even a few kid and adult bikes in the garage, sand toys, beach chairs, etc. We were 5 minutes from Legoland, 5 minute walk to the beach, 45 minutes to San Diego Zoo and an hour from Disneyland. Our Camp Counselor (John) had deemed this “not a Disney trip”, as he agreed that we needed to focus on the younger 2 kids this trip, and we were expecting Disneyland to be a bit daunting for us. We would do a day at Disney, but would not attempt to cover everything. Save that for another trip. We wanted to see legos and animals and beaches… and maybe a little Disney.
Legoland: This was our second visit to this amazing park, but our first was when the twins were 4 yrs old and middle guy was an infant. We were again amazed at all of the lego creations to see. You can build just about anything you can dream up out of legos, and those magical Lego engineers have done that. Wouldn’t that be the neatest job ever… to build Legos all day every day? The rides were pretty cool too, mostly geared towards younger children (and adults who are scared of rollercoasters).The Beach: The weather was perfect – a little chilly for swimming at the beach, but perfect for building sand castles and getting our toes in the ocean. The boys loved playing football on the beach too! We missed our sweet water loving dog here though. We built some cool sandcastles, which Ben took joy in wrecking, thus creating frustration among the other kids, such that one child broke off to try to distract Ben by building him special castles that he was allowed to wreck! He wasn’t born yesterday though, so eventually, he got to our big stuff… it’s all good though. At the end of the day, that great tide would have gotten it anyway, and Ben has all of us wrapped around his tiny finger, so not too much fuss about it.
We attempted a scenic drive at the end of our zoo day to wait out some rush hour traffic, but whining from the back seat as we crossed the Coronado bridge caused Daddy to do an about face and head for the beach house. The troops were a little in trouble, and they knew it, so everyone fell asleep on the drive.
Disneyland: We were actually pleasantly surprised at how manageable Disneyland was with 4 kids. We never attempted to do everything but we were able to make it through the highlights and hit everyone’s favorites at least one more time. The highlight of Disneyland for the younger 2 kids was definitely the Jedi Training show, where all 4 kids were selected from the audience to come on stage for the show (with a little creative marketing, we finally figured out how to get picked on our 3rd try – arrive early, which is not in our nature, and make signs to be noticed). The look on their faces when Darth Vader entered the stage was priceless, and they are practicing the new light saber moves from home often (might be dangerous?)
The favorite of the older kids was Space Mountain. It was very cool, and mommy liked it because, for a roller coaster, it wasn’t to crazy – it was dark, but no loop-di-loops, and no too big drops. Indianna Jones was another favorite of these 2, but the line was a little long, even with the fast pass, and it was a rough ride. I want to kiss the person who invented that Fast Pass system – really makes the best of your time. We are not big fans of waiting in line – I guess the kids get their patience from us. It was a good full day. We could have spent a week there, but we left feeling a little taste of Disney, enough to make us want to come back, but not too much to cause crankiness to set in. Everyone had a good time, and we all left the park in great spirits. What more could we ask for?
After Disney, we went straight to the airport, where we caught a late flight home. Everyone was duly exhausted and slept the entire flight, and all was right with the world. We clicked our heels three times and said “there is no place like home”… and we were here… with our puppy… and our cat that hides from us most of the time… and our beds… and neato toys… and laundry and all that other stuff. It was nice to be home.
Our trip was a nice escape that we will remember always, and as usual, we crammed about as much as one can into 7 days.
Happy Monday now… it is back to the real world. Baseball game tonight, and on and on!
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