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It has been so incredibly foggy for Peter and Aria’s whole visit!  This is what it’s mostly looked like all day long–yeah, that’s all of campus covered in fog, with just the top of the grad school side showing:

But since today was their last full day, we went to the beach, anyway.  We could barely see a thing, but they can say they swam in the Pacific.  And Aria LOVED the sand!

But we did get cold.

Of course the fog lifted just as we were driving home for Aria’s nap.  Peter and Tommy and I went out to Malibu Lagoon and saw all sorts of cool sea life in the tide pools!

And we ended the day having dinner on the beach at Paradise Cove.

 

 

Piano with Aria (and Peter)

Aria is becoming a whiz at our stairs!

It wouldn’t surprise anyone that Aria is extremely musical.

We taught Peter how to play Takenoko!

Everyone wanted to read to Aria, even the ones who can’t read.

And Peter helped everybody practice piano…and played for us!

Playing with Aria

Peter and Aria have been here for 24 hours, and it’s mostly been so foggy that we’ve just stayed inside and played.  Cousin bonding over Magformers and piano!

One of the benefits of staying at the Legoland hotel is that you get into the park half an hour early to ride five of the rides. We actually got there and checked into our room in time to take advantage of that on both days, but we didn’t know what we were doing the first day, so we didn’t really get the benefit on Thursday. On Friday, Derek took Tommy and Susie on the roller coaster first thing while those of us who don’t enjoy roller coasters went to Duplo Land. We were the only ones there, so Janie and Elizabeth got to ride the little train over and over and over until the big kids were ready to join us.

The Heartland City section had this carousel that the girls couldn’t get enough of.

And Janie really, really enjoyed the helicopter ride.  Since I always rode with her, I don’t have any pictures of us, but here are Tommy and Elizabeth across the way!

Tommy really loved the lego racing challenge room.

The kids got a kick out of all the chances to build with piles of legos and duplos.

The big girls’ favorite ride was Ninjago, which we didn’t get pictures of inside because it was so dark.  You had to do ninja moves to fight the bad guys who jumped out at you in your 3D glasses.  Susie was a phenom at it, beating all of her siblings’ scores every time.  The joy of going to the park when it was dead quiet was that we got to go on the ride several times.  It was too intense for Janie, so after the first two times, Derek and I had to take turns taking the big kids through.

Our tickets got us into the Legoland aquarium, too, so we walked through that in the afternoon for a change of pace.

One of the highlights of Legoland for the girls was the Lego Friends live show.

And we squeezed in a last few rides right up until closing time!

Janie’s favorite ride.  Did it well over a dozen times.

Did we mention how cool the hotel rooms were? Everything kid-sized!

Legoland Hotel

We’re halfway through our mini-vacation to Legoland. Since Inspire paid for five of our tickets, we splurged for the Legoland hotel, and boy, do the kids love it! 

Tommy competed in the evening building competition.


The hotel lobby just has huge pits of legos.


The kids are having a blast!


The suite has a kids- only nook with pirate-themed decor. I can’t tell you how much they’re loving it!


Let’s just hope the park is as empty and the weather as good tomorrow! 

We’ve enjoyed the tradition of Friday Pizza and Movie Nights this year, and last week, we invited the Boards over to share pizza and watch The Aristocats.  Nicholas is Susie’s soulmate, and we all love cuddling little James!  Other than the cranky old people, we have the best neighbors.

Afternoon at the Park

Most of our homeschool days are hard, hard work.  Occasionally, Tommy will get up at 6:20 am to start his schoolwork, everyone will be diligent, we’ll have minimal distraction and fighting, and we’ll be done by lunchtime!  Today we celebrated that rare awesome day by getting croissants at Starbucks (it’s National Croissant Day, don’t you know, and we just talked about croissants last week in French class) and playing at the park all afternoon.

Favorites Day

Yesterday at dinner, Susie told us that if she could invent a new holiday, it would be Favorites Day: a day when you get to eat your favorite foods for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.  So of course all the kids had to tell me what they’d choose for their own Favorites Day!  I wrote it down because when I feed them some of these things in 6 months and they gag and complain, I want empirical proof that these were allegedly their favorite meals!

French Class

The kids are still loving their French class with Marion. Even Janie is brave enough to speak up now! 

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