Family Vacation part 2B - Legoland

Day 2 at Legoland was even cooler than the day before. Claire really wanted to drive the safari cars again. She was thrilled to be able to steer herself.

Here is a picture of Andrew in front of a dinosaur last week and.....

here he is in front of the same dinosaur 2 years ago. He looks so little in this picture!

Here is a picture of the inauguration all in Legos!

And San Francisco as well.

Claire and Danny on the toddler train.

Claire and Andrew in a tow truck in the play area. The play area is really big and has lots of fun things to do. We literally had to drag them out of here at the end of the day.


Friday was the 10 year anniversary of the opening of Legoland, so they were debuting a new 4D movie. What is 4D you ask? You get all of the perks of 3D except that when the wind blows on screen, it blows in the theater, and when it rains, well you get the picture. The kids loved it and the adults could have gone without the rain.

Here is Claire relaxing in the car on the drive back home. It was quite the drive back to San Jose from Carlsbad. We had the same DVD issues peppered with the constant requests from Andrew as to how much longer it would be and how many more exits???? So I started with 100 exits and took a few off every time he asked. All in all, we had a great time with the family and at the amusement parks.

Family Vacation part 2A - Legoland

On Thursday morning we drove from Anaheim down to Carlsbad. We got two for one tickets to Legoland, so we were going to go for two days. After having sunny weather at Disneyland the day before, we were surprised to find a chilly, foggy day in Carlsbad. Andrew was still excited to go though, because we had gone there for his third birthday and he still remembers some of the rides.

We tried to get the boys to pose out in front of the sign, but to no avail.

One of the first Lego "creations" we saw was Darth Vadar. The kids thought this was really cool.

The first ride was the Lego safari ride where you ride through the jungle and see Lego animals.

Even though it was cold, it didn't stop Andrew from wanting to play in the water. When the kids stand on the circles, the water shoots out of the ground.

While Andrew was riding some rides, Claire and I found a Lego room that she could play in. She loved it and probably would have been happy in there all day. Making tall towers is her favorite thing. Grandma ended up getting her some of the larger Legos which she really likes to play with at home.

There are two different car rides for kids that are 3-5 and 6-10. This is one of Andrew's favorite rides because he actually gets to control the gas and the steering wheel. Plus, they give you a driver's license!

This, however, is Andrew's favorite ride at any amusement park. Luckily, we got to this ride after the sun had finally come out. You ride in a pirate boat and get to shoot water at the unsuspecting bystanders.

Andrew posing with a knight and...

then riding the knights horse.

At the end of the day, here are Claire and Andrew sharing fruit snacks and water. By the way, Grandma had purchased all 10 of us matching red Disneyland shirts. You definitely couldn't miss the Kiehn family.

Family Vacation part 1 - Disneyland

We spent last week with the Kiehn side of the family on vacation in southern California. Danny's brother Todd and his family came from Austin, Texas and Danny's parents drove down from the East Bay. We drove down on Tuesday and all was good in the car until the batteries died in the DVD players. We have one and borrowed one, so when Claire's died first she was not happy. Luckily we also had headphones.


When there was no more Barney to watch Claire was looking playing with a sticker book and thought it would be fun to stick them in her hair - or at least until they need to be removed. She was also eating Oreos in the car which I would not recommend. There were a lot of brown crumbs everywhere!

We had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney on Tuesday night. Again, it was all good until the faux thunderstorm. Andrew did not like the sound of the thunder. Claire loved the large fish tanks with the beautiful tropical fish. Andrew and his cousins Ron and Alex played on the Legos outside the Lego store after dinner.

We arrived at the park at 10:00 am ready to ride some rides. It was a beautiful spring day with lots of sunshine!

Here are the grandparents with 3 of the 4 grand kids on the trip.

Claire decided to help us navigate the park. The lack of reading skills proved to be her downfall though. About this time, we realized that we may have made a mistake by bringing our kids to Disneyland too soon. Andrew would not go on the first two rides that Danny tried to take him on. He proclaimed that he would not be going on any ride that is too loud, dark, scary, or fast. Surprisingly enough, Disneyland has many of these type of rides.

He desperately wanted to go on Dumbo. That is is favorite ride. He went on it twice. He would have ridden this all day if we let him. We continued our day riding safe rides like Autotopia, It's a Small World, Story Book cruise, and Jungle Cruise (well except for the gun shots).

While they rode Dumbo Claire rode the carousel twice. Even though the picture doesn't show it, she loves carousels. She was made because I walked away to take the picture.

And then I tried to get a nice family picture in front of the castle. First, I tried one with the kids. Claire wouldn't look up and then she decided that she had had enough of the stroller.

So, I let her out of the stroller in hopes that they would stand next to each other for a lovely sibling shot in front of the castle. That was not going to happen either Claire insisted on pushing the stroller around while Andrew attacked her with his imaginary light saber. By the way, this picture was taken about 6:00 pm. Claire never got back in that stroller. She only wanted to push it. So imagine this - Andrew is inside the stroller, Claire is pushing it from the back, and I am also pushing it and steering it so that we don't hit anyone. This continued for the next 3 hours.

Then Danny said, "why don't you get in the picture?" Well, Claire didn't want to be held and so we gave up on the photo opp. We had planned on staying until 9:30 to watch the fireworks, but Andrew fell asleep in the stroller at 8:30 pm, so we decided to head back to the hotel. Luckily, we were just across the street and ended up being able to see the fireworks from the hotel. Stay tuned for the Legoland adventures.

The Power Kick

I was at Ross a few weeks ago and saw a small soccer ball for Andrew. Ours got kicked over the fence and the neighbor has not thrown it back yet. I suppose it could be because it is lost in the tall grass in his backyard, but we haven't exactly ventured over there to ask for it either. When Danny saw the soccer ball he thought it would be the perfect time to get out the soccer goal that Andrew got a while back, but we haven't used yet. Danny taught Andrew the "power kick" which is basically running up to the ball and kicking it instead of kicking it from a standing position. When playing soccer with Andrew we get to trade off being the kicker and the goalie.

This is a non-power kick. Not a lot of force to make it past the goalie (mom or dad).

Perfect kick!

I was taking a picture instead of tending to the goal. The target cheers for you if you hit it and score.

Yeah!!! GOOOOAAAALLLLL! Andrew can't wait to play soccer in the fall. Hopefully the power kick will be perfected by then. Feel free to come over and try to block a power kick - I dare you!

Why I need a maid

I was browsing through the pictures on my camera and I came across these beauties. Natalie has told me that the girls can get pretty messy when they eat, but clearly I had no concept of what that really meant.

Fun with cereal. This day it was Honeycombs. When they have eaten all they want, the rest is for playing with. Who cares if it gets all over their clothes, or the floor, or their chairs???? The funny thing is that this happens so fast. One minute they are eating nice and chatting away in baby talk and the next there is milk all over the place.

Keep spreading - milk is just like finger paints.

The aftermath of it all. Her clothes had to be changed this day. That outfit was probably only on her for 30 minutes. Who couldn't love a baby face like this one?

Driving Range

One of Andrew's favorite activities is going to the driving range. His Grandpa Kiehn takes him a lot to the one by their house. Apparently it is better than the one by our house because it has water that you can hit the balls into. I tagged along yesterday afternoon so that I could get some pictures of him hitting balls.

Here he is at the beginning warming up.

He told me that he is aiming for the black flag out in the distance. It is 51 yards away, but he is confident that he will hit it someday.

He missed the ball on this one, but he didn't seem to mind, he just tried again.

Danny made contact. I asked him if he could hit it over the fence and he said no, but proceeded to do it anyway.

Like father like son. Andrew needs a little more work on his stance. He seemed a bit preoccupied with cleaning his clubs yesterday. He washed them and dried them before putting them back in his bag. He really likes hitting balls. He didn't get a chance to put yesterday, but he says that he likes that too.