LegoLand

Today was the day the kids have been waiting for since Christmas! Their Christmas gift this year from James and I was a trip to LegoLand California. We arrived just before the park opened and stayed all the way until closing. (Technically, we stayed even past closing since we didn't leave the store until about 30 minutes after the park closed!)

Posing with the Lego family:

...and the Lego bison...

SO excited!

On the boat ride:

At the Capitol Building. There are almost 381,000 legos in the building! (There are more than 40 million legos at LegoLand!)

In New York City:

On the Beetle Bounce. Rudy and Cooper weren't sure about this one at first, but they LOVED it and rode it over, and over, and over...Brady tolerated it a few times, but then opted for a second ride on the very cool Lost Kingdom laser game/ride.

After a few more kiddie rides, we stopped at the Knight's Tournament. We weren't sure Rudy would do this, but he loved this one too! You could choose the level for your ride, but the boys were only big enough to do a 2 (out of 5). I can't quite imagine doing a 5!

All of the Star Wars legos were a big hit with the little boys!

Rudy vs. Darth Vader...

Volvo driving school. The kids took this very seriously!

Ack! A lion!

Hagrid and Harry...

Lego Build and Test. Quite a competitive situation here!

What a ham!

Natural History Museum

We had grand plans to go horse back riding today, but the weather didn't cooperate. As Kathy said, it only rains 6 days a year in the desert...why does one of those days have to be on our vacation?! Even so, we made the best of it and had a fun afternoon at the "dinosaur museum."

Posing in front of the [fake] desert scenery...

Ahhh...Rudy! Watch out!

Panning for gold!

Miscellaneous Phoenix

We took advantage of a fair amount of in Phoenix...

Homework and reading with Nana:

Birthday cake with Popsie:

Exploring the desert with the cousins:

Checking out all the cool waterfalls in the neighborhood:

Zoned out with the electronics:

Golfing with the guys:

If you look really (really) closely in this picture, you can see the coyote running away!

Fishing

One of our adventures for our Phoenix vacation was fishing with Nana, Popsie, and Cooper. No one caught anything, but it really didn't seem to bother the little boys much! They just loved being on vacation and being outside in the pleasant weather!

A little picnic...

Patience...

Who is this all-grown-up little boy??

I love how it looks like Rudy is yelling at the fish...

Giving up hope...

After a while, it was more fun to drive the golf cart with Popsie than to fish...

Mr. Monroe

Brady finished his second major school project for the year just before we left on vacation. He chose James Monroe as his topic for the biography project.

Unfortunately, he got a touch of the stomach bug the week that he needed to be working on the project. He couldn't quite stay awake while reading the biography!

Bell liked his project as well!

Tubing

Part of Oma and Papa's Christmas present was a tubing adventure at a ski resort. They came up to babysit the kids Saturday night and we went tubing first thing Sunday morning. We could not have asked for better weather: cold enough that it wasn't slush and wet, but warm enough that we were comfortable in several layers.

Anxiously awaiting our turn...