LegoLand!

We're not really theme park people. We tend to stray from big crowds, long lines, expensive concessions, and carnival atmospheres in general. I don't like the crappy-for-you food, the stuffed animals and junky plastic "prizes", and I don't appreciate the constant, in-your-face commercial messages being communicated to my kids. For the record, I also can't stand birthday party goodie bags and certain pizza places with their games and the tokens and the tickets and the "prizes". Go ahead, call me a party-pooper. It's been done before. Why do I feel this way? Because that stuff doesn't last. The food offers no real nutritional value and the plastic toys and trinkets usually break within minutes. A minute or two of fun followed by sadness and frustration that it broke, and then I feel guilty for adding another broken plastic something to the landfill. Yes, I've followed this blog for quite some time now. She's extreme, but she makes me think.

Anyhoo, all of this to say that we rarely buy toys for our kids, but when we do it's quality stuff. A little more expensive, sure, but it's stuff that keeps getting played with. It doesn't break. Things get built, added on to, taken down and started over. Again and again. Lego has single-handedly saved my sanity this summer, I owed them. So we took a little adventure last weekend, a bit of a pilgrimage, to LegoLand!

I am not afraid to admit that it's really fun to make little boys' dreams come true. They were in heaven...

We rode all the rides. More than once. (And stood in some pretty looonnngg lines!)

He is now a licensed driver...watch out!

The boys were inspired by the Lego creations in MiniLand and the new Star Wars area. I think Papa's thinking about a new line of work as well, wouldn't it be fun to be a professional Lego builder?

This guy kinda freaked me out, but the small boy walked right up to him and gave him a fist bump, with explosion!

Papa and I also learned this past weekend that one of the greatest pleasures of parenthood is seeing pure joy on their faces when they are truly overwhelmed with excitement. Yes, we were all exhausted, we ate some less-than-gourmet pizza, we let them have their pick at the gift shop, and we spent a small fortune...but we created family memories that will stick with them for years to come and we might have had just as much fun as those little boys did...