Carlsbad 2012: Part 1

Last week, my awesome parents took us on a trip to Carlsbad for spring break. Since I took 253 pictures, I'll be splitting our vacation into a couple of posts (Remember our last trip to Carlsbad in July? It took 5 posts.). Because my parents left a few days before we did, we drove my 2 younger siblings up with us. We stopped at Burger King on the way and the kids had a lot of fun. I love the biggest picture int hat collage. Spidey really loves my little sister and seems to have a connection with her. It's really sweet. I also had to laugh because halfway there, Spidey asked if he could play with Petey's Ariel barbie and because we wanted him to stay happy, I let him. Such a funny boy.
The drive there was pretty eventless. Petey got restless and asked for her favorite song Dynamite (by Taoi Cruz) so I turned it on my iPod and put it on repeat. She literally listened to it for an hour. When we got there, Grandpa pulled the kids around on this cart thing after he got all the groceries inside.
Later that day, my sister and her cute family arrived. My kids were SO excited to see K Bear. And they all had on ASU jammies for bed time. Though we didn't plan that, we did plan a couple of matching outfits that week for our kiddos...because we are weird like that. :)
The next day was Sunday and we all went to church that morning. This was our biggest "planned matching" day. :) My sister couldn't resist buying Petey a matching dress with her daughter Ellie (early birthday present for my girly, she said. :) and the boys already had these matching shirts. So cute! Petey requested a picture with her Uncle Jp, hence the bottom left picture. :)Jp and Boss played eachother in Chess a couple of times, despite both having kids coming and going from their laps. :) Isn't she adorable??? I love my Ellie girl and am so glad I have another niece to spoil. Petey loves playing with Andrea's hair since it is longer than mine and Andrea loves it too. That night, we all walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was beautiful! The next morning, my parents surprised us and we all went to Legoland. Petey was beyond excited to ride rides and see the fishies (we also went to the aquarium...which you'll read about in the next post.).
Can I also just say how much I love my stroller? I know, random, but I really do! It os the lightest, easiest stroller I've ever had and is tiny for a double stroller. It's a Joovy sit'n'stand, if you were wondering. :) The first ride we enjoyed was a slow boat ride that had a bunch of characters (made out of legoes) from popular stories. This ride actually scared Petey the most since there were Ogres and things that popped out of the water. The next ride we went on was a pedaling ride that went over the water. We thought all of the kids would be able to go on it but after waiting in line (The handicap line, since we had my brother and sister with us:), Spidey was turned away for being too short. That little boy screamed and was so angry he couldn't get on. It made me so sad. But Petey and I had a fun time, even though I didn't realize how tricky it would be to pedal with a boot on. The kids had a fun time seeing all of the Legos everywhere. They played on this cars for a while. Spidey was hilarious. He wanted to build with the Legos and tried SO hard to break them. Here he is kicking the girl made out of Legos. :) He tried hard but she never broke. The next ride (and first ride for Bubs) was a cute helicopter ride that we controlled ourselves with levers to go up/down and left/right. Spidey waited a while in this line and I was so nervous that he wouldn't be tall enough again. Of course, his cousin who is younger had no problem getting on but Spidey didn't quite measure up. Luckily, the guy was really nice and told me to push Spidey's chin up so he'd be tall enough and he let us on the ride. :) Can you tell my boy was excited?
While we waited for the ride to start, he held his cheeks in his hands and looked so bored. It was adorable. Spidey's favorite ride was this little train that just went around in a circle two times. We went on it a couple of times because I wasn't sure how many more rides he'd be tall enough to go on. :)They also had a huge playground. Spidey loved playing and running aroundand all the kids loved building blocks with Uncle Jp. Petey had two favorite rides. This was the first one. :) I couldn't believe she was brave enough to do this by herself but she was adamant and though we lied about her age to get her on it (she's only 2 months away from being 4!), she loved it! The horse goes up and down a bit and it goes around this track. My little brother did it as well and they both loved it. The big kids (Boss, Jp, and Wilbur-Force) went on this crazy boat ride that went back and forth and spun around. The rest of us had a fun time watching them. :)I love my silly little family. Petey had fun taking silly pictures here and Spidey was chillin' in the stroller, with his feet up. The last two rides of the day for us were these ones. Petey and I had fun shooting lasers in the Indiana Jones ride and though they hd let Spidey on another ride that had this same height limit, this guy wasn't as nice and turned my little shorty away. :( Again, melt down ensued and my Spidey was left to sit in the stroller and eat popcorn. The last ride Petey and I went on is in the above collage and it was BY FAR, her favorite. She kept begging to go on it but I thought she would freak out because it goes up high and then drops you over and over again. But I was wrong! She giggled the entire time and wanted to get right back on it. Unfortunatly, we didn't have any time but I am glad she got to do it once.

So that was the first day and a half of our trip. Stay tuned for the other parts. :)