Fulfilling Childhood Dreams...For Two Boys

On our way down to Florida, David found a brochure in one of the hotels for Legoland.  Ever since then he has been waiting to go there.  He would pull it up on Google Maps all the time.  He preferred that choice over Disney World and, considering the price, we didn't mind at all.  In fact, Ryan said he has been dreaming of going to Legoland for years and years.

It is about a 3.5 hour drive north from our house and we thought we would go toward the end of the summer when the water park portion was open and spend two days.  Well, I was looking into it a couple weeks ago and found out they had Homeschool days where we could get all of us in for less than the cost of one regular ticket.
 

 At that time, the only days they offered that was on Mondays, which happens to be Ryan's day off right now so it worked out perfectly for us to go up for the day.  The picture above is Island in the Sky.  The blue arm is like a giant boom that lifts the seating portion 150 feet above ground.

Cape Canaveral built out of Legos.  We hope to see Kennedy Space Center before we leave Florida.  David knows TONS about space.

David liked the pyramid.

And several old ships out of Legos that they had on tracks that moved around in the water.  One of them even had a button you could push and it would shoot water out of a cannon.  David liked that.

This was while David was waiting to get on the Coastasaurus, a wooden roller coaster.  The first time he wasn't so sure about it after the first two drops, but it calmed down after that and I think we rode it three times.  We chose a great time to go, although it was 90 degrees that day.  For most of the rides we only waited five minutes or so.

They had a short show about pirates and the Imperial Guard.

Some of the water skiers for the show.

Waiting for the show to start.

Driving a boat with Dad.  David had a great time.  

He even bumped into other boats and the sides.

 David had a good time riding one of the horses on the lower part of the carousel.  

There was an upper level, but David wasn't so sure about riding a horse up there so he rode on a bench instead.

Some pretty flowers.  The flower was big. 

 (David is helping me narrate this.)

There was an area where the kids could build cars and then race them on tracks.  David called his car "The Great Wheeler."  David also enjoyed this a great deal (and Mom enjoyed being out of the heat for a while).  David liked pushing the green button that would release the cars and let them zoom down the track.

A mini roller coaster type ride that David went on by himself.  

He got to ride it two times without getting off because there wasn't much of a line.

We got soaked on the last ride of the day.  There was a tall thing that had water falling and the boats went right under it.  We thought we would get wet, but we really did get soaked.  Mom was glad that the park was about to close so we didn't have wet clothes all day.  However, she wasn't doing well with the heat and cooling down before the drive home was really nice.

Jessica requested more pictures of what it is like down here.  These are some pictures from the drive to Legoland driving from the coast inland toward the west.  Patches of trees that hadn't been cut down.  (Close to the coast they are quite the mix of pines and palms). 

Areas either without trees or having been cleared of trees.  This picture is of cattle grazing.  We didn't take a picture of it, but on the way home we went straight south instead of heading east to the coast and there were tons of citrus orchards.  We saw at least two orange juice factories.

We are making good use of our time while here and trying to experience what we can.