Legoland and Empanadas

My older kids decided that they wanted to make a dinner from a different country every week  Our first one was empanadas from Argentina. I can take absolutely no credit for any part of this. My daughter did the research, found the recipe, bought the ingredients and she and my son made them completely unassisted. They turned out great!

It worked out perfectly because while they were making dinner, I was busy preparing for our Legoland trip the next day. The homeschooling umbrella school that we belong to was able to get us the field trip rate of $5 a ticket! So, of course, we had to take advantage of the amazing price. Legos are out every day at my house. Sometimes, it involves whole days of complex building and playing and other times, it's just someone tinkering around while they watch tv, but they are almost always being used, so we were really excited about going. We woke up at 5 am, drove about 3 hours, and got there when it opened at 10. We had a great day at the park. The weather was beautiful, the lines were fairly short and, despite serious lack of sleep, we all had really great time.

Braving the chilly early morning weather

My favorite part was Mini World. I want to be a Lego sculptor when I grow up.

Mini Miami

We loved this because the building with the red spiral staircase in the middle is one of the kids' favorite landmarks

Mini first family

Mini NY

They had classes in here. My son had fun learning to program a Lego Mindstorms robot

 

ahhhhhhhhhhh

Putting out the fire. 

At the end of the day, the lines were almost gone so the girls spent the last hour or so going from ride to ride.

Playing in the Duplo playground

Legos and Star Wars. It doesn't get much better than that....except maybe, Legos and Pirates of the Caribbean. (There's a slight possibility that I'm really a little boy)

After the park closed they had a Lego tree lighting ceremony, complete with "snow".

 

I didn't manage to get one single picture of all 4 of my kids together, but this one was really sweet.

Then we got back in the car and journeyed home. We chose a different route home for easier stopping, since the baby was not very happy about being in her carseat on the way back. So, it was a bit of a longer trek back, but we did eventually make it home in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted but so happy to have gone.