kirstencan

Shirts for Legoland

Man, why does it take me so long to post these days?  I guess the past couple of weeks have been swamped, and this weekend I spent (listening to General Conference and) printing, high-lighting, color-coding, and seating-chart(ing?) in preparation for the Primary Program at church.  ANYWAY.

So I won't go TOO into our family vacation - it's much like last year, and I documented that one pretty well. But I thought it would be fun to make the boys minifig shirts (similar to the Lego birthday shirt) for our day at Legoland. 

The girl wanted one, too!  Surprise!  She is SUPER into Lego right now, though, so it's not really one. 

Once again, I just sketched the design (not perfect) and used a freezer paper stencil to make these.  EXCEPT, this time was my first using actual fabric paint (metallic for the boys) and I have to say it kicks acrylic paint's butt.  Seriously, Kirsten, it's taken you like 5 years to try 'real' fabric paint?  That was dumb.  I've always used acrylic because I have a lot of it.  But I now recommend using fabric paint.  Much smoother and turned out softer and nicer.

ANYWAY...  Here's a closeup (inadvertantly cropped, too) of the boys.  Do you ever just start pointing your point-and-shoot randomly around at places like this?  Apparently, I do.

They totally got compliments on their shirts, too - so that was cool.

SOMEONE could have stayed all day in the new Star Wars section of Miniland. Seriously, I'm pretty sure he'd rather have stayed there than done rides or anything else. 

I have to say, it was pretty cool.

And I took a ton of photos, which I turned into a Shutterfly photobook for his birthday (shh).  Here's a couple of fun scenes.

Funny Legoland story:  When we walked in I saw a K-12 booth.  Turns out we accidentally came on HOMESCHOOL DAY!!!  We could have gotten $20 tickets if we'd known about it ahead of time!  Bummer.

Post-Beach = Whiney Week

We had such a crazy stressful week (I don't even want to talk about it) before we left for our vacation that I didn't get any posts scheduled while I was gone - oops!  But did you even notice?  Hmm.

 

But yeah, Vacation.  I miss you already.  And vacationing off-season is SO the way to go.

And check this out:

Dolphins at our beach!  Amazing, right?

Man, that was cool.

Here's what the kids are missing from vacation:

1. The beach

2. Cartoon Network

3. Picking whatever they want for breakfast from the hotel buffet (I miss that, too!)

4. The pool

5. Eating out (I actually had enough of that)

6. Using the key cards (What is the fascination?)

7. Soda refills

 

What I'm missing:

1. The beach

2. Housekeeping

 

I hope it's not just our family, but the week after a big vacation is a bit rough.  A bit too tired, too whiney, too much laundry, etc.

Caught up on the laundry, now it's time to vacuum out all the sand from our car (and clean the dried chocolate milkshake off of the backseat - oy).

Missed you!  Back soon!

Vacation Chapter Four {Legoland}

This was our second trip to Legoland, but I never posted about it last year.  Can you think of a better 'land' for our family?  I can't.

And honestly, I can't say enough good things about this place.  It rocks.

I've had people who haven't been there ask me if their kids are 'too old' for Legoland.  While it IS geared for younger ones, if you have Lego fans in your family I say it's a go.  Aaron and I love it (but we both grew up playing with Lego).  If you have kids who aren't so into Legos and way into fast rides then they might not like it so much. 

There are a few fast rides too, though, never fear.

(Check how I inadvertently blocked my kiddos faces perfectly - ha!)

There is so much to look at - we just get a kick out of every Lego model in the park.  And Aaron always wonders how many bricks are in each one and how long it took to build.  At one point we found a worker who knew some of the answers.

And the fact that the rides all look like they are made of Lego bricks, too - that's just cool.

Below: "A retired Lego mold".  See?  I just think it's all fascinating.

 

Miniland is always cool.  They've changed it up some since last year, too.

I took a ton of photos to make our own Miniland photobook (someday).  We loved looking at the houses decked out for Halloween!

 

The Bionicle building room is a family favorite.

And this year we did the Lego Racers building room.

My kids could have spent all day here.

Have I mentioned that it was SO not crowded?  Ahhhh....
 

Below is Monkey kicking a Bionicle.  SO Monkey.

 

He also stomped on Lego people's feet.   He told us later he was hoping they'd jump up and come to life...

Yeah, the place is hilarious and awesome.  We loved it (again).

This year we were thinking of spending a second day here, but really we hit everything the first day and we all wanted another beach day.

Awesome.

Vacation Chapter Three {Tide Pools}

The only thing I'd wanted to do that didn't happen on our last CA trip was to visit a tide pool

So this time it was a must.

We headed back to the beach one evening with my brother's family.

Lucky for us low tide was at sunset.  A gorgeous night.

There was no shortage of cool stuff to see - including a ray!

 

 

*Sigh* I really wish we lived closer to the coast!  Maybe someday...

Vacation Chapter Two {Seaworld}

Sheesh, I'm sorry this is taking me so long to post lately!

Well, before we left on our vacation, the school librarian that I chat with while Thomas is at speech was asking me if we'd been to Seaworld.  And she raved about it.  They have had year passes for ten years and they don't even live in California!  Aaron also came home from work one day randomly saying "Maybe we should go to Seaworld."

The idea didn't appeal to me so much...but when I looked up their site, it looked pretty cool.

So, basically, Seaworld was kind of an afterthought - but it turned out to be a highlight of our trip.

Really?  We got to TOUCH a DOLPHIN!  I think we could have gone home right after that and called the day a success.

 

That was so cool.

Also?  The kids were AMAZING.  Not that they're ever BAD, but sometimes the boys get excited/overstimulated at places like these and aren't the best at sticking with us the way they need to.  You can't predict how they will act, especially Thomas.

But they were AWESOME.

I don't know if it was the excellent sensory input from the beach the past few days or what, but Thomas was exceptionally good.

Most of the time we go to a zoo or aquarium here, he wants to race through it instead of taking a little time for each animal, but this time he oohed and aahed at each tank in the (multiple) aquariums.

And he stayed with us SUPER well!  I was practically cheering out loud.

 

The week before we left we checked out a bunch of library books about whales, dolphins, rays, sharks, and fish.  I think that really made the kids more interested in the aquariums, too.

The kids were most excited to see the dolphin show, but they ended up liking the orca show a little better (less cheesy, less overly LOUD, and we had bought the kids hats by this time = less bright).

Better than the show, though, was right afterwards, when they watched the orca swim in the tank 'underwater'.

I didn't know that Seaworld had so much to see!  I think I liked the arctic area best, Monkey liked the penguins ("Penguinos!"), the girl liked the dolphins. 

Thomas' favorite (by far) was the sea lion show.  Hilarious!  Much more so if you were sitting by him and heard his hilarious laugh through the whole thing.

We got decently soaked on one ride.  An amusement park must, right?  Actually, Thomas didn't, he was remarkably dry... lucky duck.

Seaworld had some awesome playground stuff, too.

September was the perfect time to go!  We walked onto the rides, and didn't have to get to the shows early!  It was not crowded at all, and the weather was beautiful.  Awesome.

We stayed ALL day!  A Cantrell family first!  So glad Thomas did so well, he's kind of our deciding factor on how long we stay anywhere.

Well worth it!  We're glad we went.

Vacation Chapter One {Beach}

I'd like to thank San Diego for providing us with what was probably one of the sunniest weeks of the summer.  People warned us that it'd been a 'weird' summer for CA weather, and we did have a couple of overcast days, but mostly sun!

There is nothing like the beach. I had a hard time not taking photos of EVERYTHING (oh, wait...).

Last year when we went on vacation (our first REAL vacation) we just wanted to take the kids to the beach.  But as long as we were headed to CA, why not hit somewhere near Legoland?

This year was the same as far as priorities.  Beach first.  We actually had 4 beach days, which was awesome.

Our first day at the beach I realized I'd had a Beach Boys song stuck in my head all morning.  Very appropriate.

We boogie-boarded (the boys caught waves piggy-back on their dad!), made castles, watched them wash away, collected rocks and shells... you name it.

Monkey loved 'fighting the waves' by throwing sand at them, jumping over them, and hitting them with his shovel.  He's always hilarious.  Oh, and he chased a lot of seagulls.

 

Thomas did a lot of digging in the sand.  He loved when the waves came all the way up to his castles.  He also spent some time with buckets on his head...

The girl spent a lot of her time making castles as well.  She also 'painted' her arms and legs with wet sand.  This girl is so tactile - she LOVES things like sand. Really, playing at the beach is the PERFECT sensory activity.  I wish we had one closer!

We spent time at La Jolla Shores and Carlsbad beaches.  Both are fun, but quite different.

If you spend a long enough time at the beach you get to see how the changing light makes everything different.

I can never get bored here.  Neither can the kids.  I loved watching what games they invented.  They were so busy.

I burn easy, and spent quite a bit of time under our umbrella (with my cameras...) just watching my family dig and play and catch waves.  I can't imagine anything more perfect on earth.

(p.s. speaking of cameras, all but the bottom three photos here were with my point-and-shoot.  In case you were curious)