Everything is awesome. At least in Legoland it is. Having 2 little Lego-enthusiasts and married to a self-proclaimed Lego Master Builder, we were all pretty excited to go to San Diego and check out Legoland. If you are planning a trip there, read below or check out the video of our trip to Legoland and the beach town of La Jolla.
It's worth it to stay at the Legoland Hotel. Yes, it is expensive. I had the 3 night stay in my online shopping cart for over 6 months before I winced and clicked to proceed with payment. It was worth it though. Both the older 'brick' hotel and the newer castle hotel are right in front of the main entrance of the theme park. When you stay at the Leogland Hotel, you get in an hour earlier and we did 2 days of 9:00 am to 9:00 pm! When you've been out all day for 12 hours, it was the best thing ever to walk a few steps to get back to the hotel room. Plus the hotel has a pool with huge foamy Lego bricks you and can build with and an outdoor movie screen where they show a Lego movie every evening.
The Legoland Hotel Room, the rooms are awesomely Lego-themed. You can pick Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Lego Friends, adventure themed...my kids decided they wanted to be Lego Pirates and had so much fun in their pirate-themed room. When you stay in the Legoland Hotel, the kids also get to do a daily scavenger hunt and the code unlocks a security safe and inside is a Lego set for each of them. Three little Lego sets for each day of our stay! The kids thought it was just awesome.
The Legoland Brick Buffet restaurant serves delicious foods. Your hotel stay comes with buffet breakfast every morning and we also had dinner there one evening. They have a kids buffet area that is built lower down so my kids could easily self serve piles of chocolate chip pancakes, fruit loops and yogurt. The adult buffet area serves made-to-order omelettes, bacon, waffles, pancakes, bagels...basically every breakfast food you could want...even churros and soft serve ice cream.
The rides at Legoland are geared for younger kids. If your kids like thrilling rides, the rides at Playland are probably more intense than the rides at Legoland. But a lot of the rides are Lego-themed and driving a Lego car and a Lego boat is pretty awesome.
There are also some Legoland-specific rides like the Ninjago ride where you put on 3D glasses and you need to ninja chop your way through the ride. There was also a really fun ride called Deep Sea Adventure where you go in a real submarine and go on a mission to spy things in the water where there are real fish, sting rays and sharks swimming!
Don't forget to check out the Lego 4D movies. There are several different 20 minute Lego movies showing throughout the day. A good break from walking around the theme park and also to get out of the hot sun.
Spend a day or at least an afternoon at the Legoland Waterpark. We spent part of the second day building lego rafts and jumping waves in the impressive Lego Chima wave pool. My kids are pretty wimpy when it comes to waterslides, there were some really fun looking slides and tube rides that they were too scared to do. They were more than happy in the Lego Duplo play area...a shallow pool with little slides made for toddlers and preschoolers.... and my wimpy kids.
Do Legoland Sea Life at night. The Legoland aquarium is open from 8:00-9:00 pm after the theme park is closed so we did it at the end of the day and it worked out well. It didn't take longer than an hour to see everything in the relatively smaller aquarium and the kids had a scavenger map where they had to go to different stations and stamp their Sea Life passports.
Bring your Lego mini-figures from home to trade! All the Legoland staff from the server at the restaurant, the cashier at the gift shop and all the ride operators have Lego figurines with them and you can trade with them anytime. The kids loved scoping out all the mini-figures out there and trading up.
Ask for Lego Pop Badges and look out for Mr. Gold. Each ride operator has "pop badges", these free collectable souvenir badges that they will give you if you just ask. Did I mention they are free ? This mama is always on the hunt for freebies. They sell Legoland lanyards to keep your pop badges on or you can bring your own ahead of time and save yourself the money. And then there's the ultra exclusive "Mr. Gold Pop Badge". This is what it is - there are 9 random Legoland staff members wearing the rare Mr. Gold pop badge each day, no one knows who they are and where they will be but if you spot someone wearing Mr. Gold, you run up and ask for it and it is worth a FREE ticket to Legoland! We were lucky enough to find someone wearing Mr. Gold on his board shorts at the Legoland water park. We already had tickets for our days at Legoland so we have decided to keep this rare souvenir. Apparently you can sell it on eBay for a lot of money so if the kids ever need more money in their college fund, we can cash in Mr. Gold!
Collect pictures of all your memories. We bought a multi-pass photo bracelet and it allows you to have digital access to all the pictures from your time at Legoland. You just scan your bracelet and the pictures get loaded onto your account so at the end of your trip you have all the pictures from the rides and every character meet and greet there was. We don't get family pictures very often and now we have a dozen hilarious ones with all the different Lego characters. I think our Christmas card this year might just be us trying to eat the Lego hot dog guy.... ..good one right?
"Real" camping is a lot of work so when our friends invited us to go "glamour-camping" (aka glamping) at their membership-only campground where there are hot showers, flushing toilets, a pool, and a games room...we were all in. It is still an insane amount of work to find all our camping gear from the depths of our basement and driving east bound on a Friday towards Cultus Lake took way too long but once we got there, the rest of the weekend was glorious.
These are the things I love most about camping with good friends:
Campfires: there are some important life skills like swimming or riding a bike and another life skill is perfecting the art of roasting a hot dog or a marshmallow without burning it or having it entirely engulfed in flames. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to perfect the art of making and eating the perfect s'more...
The other great part about camping with good friends is when it's 10:00 pm finally dark enough to attempt to put your kids to bed, there's the incentive of getting them to sleep quickly so you can meet back by the campfire for a couple hours (unless you fall asleep while you are putting them down)
Freedom: I think I have mentioned this before but some strange parenting phenomenon happens when you're camping. When we are home, I would never let my kids cross the street unsupervised or play at the playground without me there but when we're camping, as long as the kids have a buddy with them, it is perfectly acceptable to let your little ones go free to traipse and frolic in the woods as they please. You want to go play at the playground ? OK - go with a friend.You want to play flashlight tag? Ok - go with your friends. You want to go in the forest and find fairies? Sure - go with a friend. I don't know about you, but this mama is tired so the fact that the kids all play nicely together and show up eventually back at the campsite when they are hungry is so glorious.
It takes a village: I also love the co-parenting aspect of camping with friends. If some of the kids want to play at the playground, and some of the kids want to go throw rocks in the creek and the rest to go swimming, there's enough parents to go around that everyone can be happy (including the parents).
I don't particularly love public pools so I'm grateful that there's always one parent that is happy to be in the pool with all the kids while the rest of us chill on the pool deck.
Collaborative cooking- meal planning and cooking can be so exhausting...I cook 7 days a week so anytime I don't have to cook is welcome break. We pre-planned and coordinated for all our meals so each family just brought a few ingredients to contribute to each meal. No one had to spend a long time cooking and everything was simple and delicious.
Togetherness - One of the best parts of camping is being in a tent altogether with your family. I love it as much as my kids do. It's such a novelty to have a family sleepover and now that they aren't toddlers and don't wake up at 4:30 am at the crack of dawn, I enjoy the morning cuddles even more.
This summer, we'll be attempting our first backpacking overnight camping trip with these two, I'm a little apprehensive because we can easily fill the back of our pickup truck for a weekend camping trip and I don't know if the kids can carry more than their water bottles and their stuffed dragons. It sure won't be as refreshing as glamping with our friends but I'm always up for another adventure...
So there's two ways to get ready to run a speedy half marathon. You could take my approach which is commit to the training. Run in the rain. Run in the sun. Run is sub-zero temperatures. Just get out there on do it. 7:00 am every Sunday for the last 6 months.
Or you could choose my Husband's approach which only works if you are amazingly fit and fabulous and you decide a couple weeks before the BMO half marathon that he will do it too (taking the place of my sister's race spot who sadly injured her foot and couldn't train). Sister changes the name on her run bib to SpongeBlob. Haha.
Huband -aka Mr. Fit and Fabulous does two short runs before race days....not even wearing proper running shoes. (Convince Husband to at least buy a pair of Asics if he's going to run 21.1 km)
***Race Day***
Is it seriously 5:30 am and we are heading out? I can't believe 18,000 people are getting ready to run this early.
6:00 am. OK. Used the bathroom. Check. Stretch and shake out the jitters. Check. Scope out other runners. Check. Take obligatory pre-race selfies. Check.
7:00 am and everyone is on the course. There is an intoxincating energy and lots of pointy elbows. Avoid the elbows. At 3 km, Husband says he needs to go pee and runs off to the rows of porta-potties, I fully believe I won't see him again as I keep running at race pace full steam ahead but a few minutes later, he is running next to me again. What was in the stroop waffel you had for breakfast? That's insane how fast you peed and came right back beside me.
Gosh, Huband is fast. Why is he always 10 strides ahead of me? Seriously, a little jealous how easy he is making it look.
Hills. Oh Gosh, so many hills. I don't remember this many hills last year. How can Husband still be running strong ten paces ahead? Why is he not even breathing hard? Start to lose Husband in the crowd...
Who is that waiting for me on the sidewalk ? Oh it's Mr. Fit and Fabulous - even with enough time to unzip his running belt and take pictures of me smiling as I run past. How does he have enough time to choose a filter for the picture? And here I am thinking I am The Flash and the picture would be so blurry because I am so fast. Ha. I guess not.
There's a giant video screen at 11 km. And there's our sweet boy on the video screen cheering "Go Mommy Go! Go Daddy Go!" Heart melting.
What is with my water bottles today? They fall out of my run belt three times. This never happened during my training runs. Husband scoops them up and holds them for me and he keeps trucking along still not looking like this is even hard for him. He holds my water bottle 10 strides ahead of me and I run like a donkey chasing a carrot.
OK, 16 km in and I am feeling tired - must inhale the energy gels. Gosh, I love the salted caramel Gu energy gels - these things are like rocket fuel. I can't believe I have been running at this pace for an hour and half. Why do people drink coffee when they can just have these?
Wow, this city is beautiful. Maybe I should stop running just to really take in this view. Ahhh...Husband is still ahead, seriously how is he moving so fast? And how do you have enough time to take pictures ? Here is my best I'm-having-so-much-fun-I-don't-feel-like-dying-at-all face.
Another hill ? Really? Maybe I should walk this one. Husband says no and that I can do this. He holds my hand and we run up the hill together Aw, he really is the best.
OK yes. Finally. Downhill. That's what I'm talking about.
With 500 m left, we see the 2:00 hour pacer run slightly in front of us. The panic sets in and I dig deep down and try to sprint to the finish trying to get back in front of the 2:00 hour pacer.
Oooh I see the happy face balloon bouncing among the crowd and I know that my sister is here to cheer us on. Start to channel my inner gazelle and sprint towards that finish line in the distance.
Cross the finish line together at 2 hours and 13 seconds. Soooooo close - just fourteen seconds -away from running a sub-2 half marathon!!!! I totally could have run 14 seconds faster but at least it was just such an joy to run with the best husband in the world.
Time to proudly claim that medal to add to the collection.
Ooooh and there's Lisa! So proud of this mama! Just over a year ago, she could barely run 2 km with me and today she ran and crushed her first half marathon finishing it in 2:12.
Pretty amazing that Lisa's husband works right by the finish line and we got to go up to the roof of his building and watch other racers finish from way up top.
And of course take our own victory pictures from the roof top!!!
I was a little mad that Husband could have easily run a sub 2-hour half marathon without the training that I put in but so grateful he didn't leave me in the dust and kept encouraging and waiting for me when he couldn't spot me behind him anymore. That's pretty amazing. He is Mr. Fit and oh-so Fabulous. Now that I know how much better it is to run races with him, I just need to convince him to run a few more half marathons together...
