Lexington Children's Museum

Tuesday we spent the day with my dad who took us to the Children's Museum. The kids had a great time, and as my dad said, we could have probably left them there for hours and gone and done our own thing, and they never would have missed us.

Future Derby winners

Future astronauts

Or will he reach the peak of Mt. Everest one day?

This was probably the coolest room they had - gigantic bubbles! They had one that you could pull up around yourself, and one that was about 4 feet across, in addition to big bubble wands.

All of us got in on the bubble fun!

Grace is about 10 hands tall

Tristan is about 9 1/2 hands tall

Sitting with Grandpa

March Madness

When in Kentucky, do as Kentuckians...
...so we bought a basketball set and played a little hoops!

Go Big Blue!!

Up, Up, and Away

Saturday morning (really, really, really early) we headed off to Kentucky on the start of a two week vacation to see family before we all head to Korea for two to three years.

We got off to a rocky start - our 12:50 AM flight was delayed until 2:40 AM and then we weren't sure that we would all be able to get on the same flight out of Atlanta - all this on top of having to replace the transmission in David's pickup just before we are planning to sell it (it went out on our way home from dropping off my vehicle in San Diego), and then not having it ready before we had to drive 3 hours to Phoenix (so we had the extra expense of a rental car). The troubles on our trip were just the icing on the cake of a really crummy week!

But, it began to improve once we got to Atlanta (except for the cold coffee and cinnamon rolls), when someone was kind enough to get all of us on the same flight to Lexington, and even got us all in the same (bulkhead, yeah!) row. We got to talking to the flight attendant on the way there and she offered the kids a chance to go up to the flight deck (it's no longer a cockpit) and meet the pilots. Tristan declined as he had fallen asleep and was not awake enough to be personable when we landed.

But this little girl thought it was pretty cool

Maritime Museum of San Diego

Since we had an extra day in San Diego, we decided to go to the Maritime Museum of San Diego to see some of the old ships that are docked there.

The Surprise

This ship was used in the movie Master and Commander

The Star of India

The oldest sailing vessel in the world that still sails on a regular basis

A Russian diesel electric attack submarine

Driving the ship

Looking out for our enemies

Immigrants on the Star of India

The Captain

After touring these ships, we headed over to the Navy Base to go see some of the modern ships, then started on the long drive home.

Legoland, Day Two

Here are more pictures from our second day at Legoland.

My kids had no idea who this was, but I will remedy that before long!

Elephants - another of my favorite things

Sleeping Beauty

The Taj Mahal

Lady Liberty in New York Harbor

That's the new Freedom Tower in the background

Sydney Opera House

Mt. Rushmore

Have I mentioned how amazed I am at the attention to detail and talent around here?!

We stopped at the build and test area for the kids to build cars and race them.

Grace's bug mobile

Tristan's super fast race car

On your mark, get set, go!

(Grace's car won)

David bought two pounds of pick your own Legos, and as soon as we got back in the hotel room, he broke them out and started to build!

Grace got into it too.

Since returning home, he has installed a program that allows you to build models with Legos on his computer. I think I've created a monster (or two)!

Despite a couple of setbacks there and on our way home, it was a great weekend, and we had a great time being able to spoil our kids a little more, and spending time together before David leaves for Korea.

Legoland Rides

Here's a few pictures of some of the rides we went on.

A ride similar to the teacups.

A really bouncy ride - you went up, and then dropped down in several steps.

From the seas...

...to the skies...

...and everywhere in between.

We even got to go on an African safari.

We went on a roller coaster the first day of our visit, and the second day, Grace begged to go on it again, but Tristan wanted nothing to do with it. So, being the roller coaster lover that I am, I happily gave into Grace's request, and off we went!

She's hanging on to me, but still has one hand up in the air!