Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Rides, Slides and Funny Bunnies


The trip to Legoland should have taken two hours. With three kids averaging once a minute each, that added up to 360 times that I was asked 'Are we there, yet'. It's okay, though - I only answered once.

We were literally one minute before the exit when Murphy apparently thought that we hadn't been playing the waiting game nearly long enough. 


Peter's frustration was the first to jump out of the car.

'Ah, come on! I can see the park from here!'

'Well, the good news is - you guys can stop asking; we're there. The bad news is that they just announced on the radio that a truck overturned just after this exit and it will take them at least an hour to clear the road.'

'I need the bathroom.'

'Of course, you do.'

The hour delay exponentially increased the number of questions. My patience drew on my former managerial days and simply delegated the task of answering idle questions to my life planner.

When we finally made it to the Lego gates, Angie insisted on getting maps. I tried to convince her that we should download the app, but she is German, so change was simply not possible. Technology is just a fad. 

I love this picture. Angie and Tom are competing to keep the family from getting lost. Peter is just, you know, whistling. And David is...uh...



'David! Get your finger out of Lego-boy's mouth!'

Before we could even get started, David had skipped over to the Dark Side and was trying to pick a fight with Darth.


On our way to the first ride, Peter got suckered into the 'rickety bridge' scam. The task was simple - climb the rope ladder to the top, ring a bell and win an over-sized minion with one eye. Peter almost made it halfway before face-planting the mat.


David didn't make it as far, but I gave him extra points for his wildly flamboyant fall from grace.


Tommy fell after the first rung, but he noticed that the carny was busy selling tickets to other gullible children and decided to see how far he could make it.


Luckily, his brothers were there to keep him honest and starting screaming at him to 'STOP CHEATING AND GET OFF THE MAT!!'.

Peter was convinced he could make it and begged to go again, prompting me to explain for the third time that the game is rigged.

'Peter, if my wallet is going to be pillaged, I'd rather just fork it over to the Vikings.'



After a hard day of swinging back and forth on a wooden boat until you want to vomit, nothing hits the spot like frozen milk. Trust me. 


The ice-cream was a good start, but everyone knows that it's not a party until someone gets wet. Peter and Tommy took the low road.


David's a natural born adrenaline junkie, so we decided to take the high road.




David was full of giggles and courage on the way up. On the way down, well... let's just zoom in on the picture above. 


I've seen videos of lab monkeys witnessing fire for the first time that rivaled David's watery descent. Until we splashed to a stop. Then he giggled like a madman and asked to go on it again.

After passing on the second chance to give our middle-born a heart attack, we decided to go for a 'drip and dry' stroll. Something about near-death makes you hungry, so I bought David a big bucket of popcorn. 




Wannabe-detectives will certainly want to take a second glimpse at this shot. Notice the big pile of popcorn on the pavement. Hmmmm, what happened here?

David totally has the 'nothing to see here people, let's just keep moving' look.

Tommy has the 'I was ABSOLUTELY not the person that initially thought it would be funny to whack the underside of David's popcorn tub' look.

Peter has the classic 'I'm so disgusted and embarrassed to be related to any of you so I'm just going to glare until someone makes eye contact with me' look.

Angie has the 'I'm going to ignore what just happened and pretend that I am trying to fold a map, which is actually more difficult than one might think' look.

And me, I had the 'what in the HELL is a chainsaw-wielding bunny doing in a kid's amusement park??!!' look.



Luckily, I'm married to Angie, who has trained me over the years to never question faulty logic.
Instead, I navigated the boys to the grand finale they had been waiting for - the Star Wars 'Super-duper-amazing-wow' exhibition.


Inside, Peter hijacked my camera and took 453 unfocused pictures of obscure Star Wars characters that were immortalized in Lego pieces behind thick glass. Oh, yeah, and one picture of David and me as we went on the ride that I now lovingly call 'flip-me-upside-down-and-spin-me-around-until-my-brain-can-sympathize-with-my-washing-machine'.


It was after this lovely ride that my stomach decided to call it quits for the day. On the way out, we hit 'THE LEGO SHOP', which was, by far, the best part for all three of them. For David, it was the 'Lady Hulk' Lego figure that did it for him.


For Tommy, it was being able to grab fistfuls of Lego pieces without getting screamed at.


For Peter, it was all about building 'a pool that is cool'.


We actually stayed in the shop until we were kicked out. I was glad that it had more to do with the time and less to do with their collective noise level.

I was also quite pleased that we managed to actually leave an amusement this time without one of our kids suffering a concussion or breaking a cheek bone. Okay, we did manage to lose a kid on the way to the parking lot, but to be honest, it was his own fault. 


Luckily Tommy's muffled giggling made him easy to find.

Before leaving, we stopped another family and forced them to take a nice family shot. Thankfully, they were patient enough to overlook the first attempt when Peter tried to give David 'bunny ears' and the second try when David punched Peter in the arm for trying to give him 'bunny ears'. When Tommy dropped to the pavement and tried to get the photographer to take a shot of the bottom of his shoe, Angie whipped out an approach that made me truly happy that I am not in her class. Smile.


--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk: 
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we had fun at Legoland.
David: That we go'ed to Legoland.
Tom: Legoland. 

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I couldn't get a Minion. 
David: That we had traffic.
Tom: That we need to wait so long in the car.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play much much much Lego with Tom and David.
David: I want to play with my friends.
Tom: I want to cuddle with Mom.

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