January 2009

After almost a week of endless fun, we were ready to head on for home.  We had initially planned on visiting the nearby Carlsbad Factory Outlets before hitting the road, but decided otherwise, given the fact that we had a rather long journey ahead of us.

So after we checked out of the hotel, we headed towards LA.  Ethan fell asleep in the car on the way there, but woke up in time for lunch at In n Out.  After lunch, he refused to go back to sleep and started chattering away till evening.  When we were approaching Gilroy (about an hour from home), he fell asleep again.  It was already pretty dark by then.

We had Vietnamese food for dinner before we drove back to the comfort of our home.

I am, in fact, extremely proud of Ethan for being so well-behaved the entire journey.  We were rather worried about the long haul but he proved that he was able to handle it.  I remember somewhere along the way back, he told us he wanted to “go potty” to “pangsai”, but since we could not immediately find a suitable rest area, he managed to hold it till we reached home!

His sense of direction is rather good too, for he could recognize the route we were on, even though it was dark.  As we were passing by the mountains and hills, he mentioned “horse”, “cows” and “many trees”, which was what he saw 6 days ago.

The memories we shared are like treasures in our heart that will live on forever. The phrase below just about summarizes our most memorable vacation as a family.

Credits
Elegant word art (together have it all) from Bethany
Kit Moment papers from Sueli Colbert
Pacific papers  from Lindsay Jane Designs
Grungy papers from Pillowgirl

Check out the waffles we had at the hotel for breakfast!  These were the self-made ones (I’m getting pretty good at this, aren’t I?), and the rest of the breakfast spread was also rather good.  There were fruits, juice, milk, bagels and hot chocolate too!

Thanks to our 2-day park hopper tickets for Legoland and Sealife (which is a recently-opened section just next to the Legoland entrance), we started our adventure on Day 6 by visiting Sealife.

Here’s a picture of Ethan posing with an undersea background, simply because he saw some other kid doing the same. LOL

Ethan had a fun time running around the undersea exhibit areas, and even had the chance to touch a real starfish!

Here he is poking his head through one of the many viewing windows which was built in such a way so the viewers could view the fishes swimming all around them.

After Sealife, we entered Legoland, and continued our exploration, with the rides and viewing all the cool Lego exhibits.

The crowd on the second day was unbelievable and most of the rides had at least a 30-minute wait time.  So while waiting for the queue to shorten, we visited areas like Miniland USA, which had breathtaking Lego structures.

Some of the exhibits had buttons at the side, which allowed visitors to press them and watch as parts of the exhibits came to life, e.g. some of the figurines would move or light up or something.  And guess who was the one who went around looking for these PUSH ME buttons?

We also had fun at Explore Village, where kids and adults alike were all really intrigued with making music with the musical fountain.  Lots of people were reliving their childhood there, I tell ya!

See, when someone steps or hops on those yellow circles on the floor, water would shoot out from the corresponding musical instrument in the musical fountain!  Now, who could resist that?! 🙂

Ethan even had the opportunity to ride on several “thrilling” rides.  For every ride that Daddy took him on, the person manning the ride would ask that Ethan’s height be checked, and since most of the rides had a 36″ minimum height requirement, he managed to get on them, being exactly 36″ himself!

Here’s Ethan smiling happily before Captain Cranky’s Challenge started:

And here’s how the ride went… see if you can catch a glimpse of the two boys! 😛

Well, one of the food specialties in Legoland not to be missed is the famous Granny’s Apple Fries.  It’s a Legoland original creation, and looks just like the regular fries, except it’s made from Granny Smith apples, dusted with cinnamon and sugar, and THEN served with vanilla cream dipping sauce.  Sounds healthy, just cuz it’s made from apples, right? 🙂

Seriously…not to be missed!

Here’s Ethan posing again, because he just wanted to:

We could tell Ethan really loves playing with Lego (as do all kids!), and it was incredibly tough to get him to leave Legoland.

This is him playing at one of the play areas, refusing to leave, but instead arranging letters on the board (ironically enough) in a straight line.  Hmmm…I wonder who he learnt that from?

Well, we all definitely had the time of our lives at Legoland.  And I am also incredibly proud of Ethan because he was not in the least bit afraid even when Daddy took him on a mini roller coaster ride on the Coastersaurus!  Yup, he’s a little thrill-seeker, all right! 

You can’t see Pete and Ethan in the video (they were in the last carriage), but you know, these roller coasters have cameras ready to take pictures of the people riding it?  We checked out those pictures after the ride, and Ethan was literally grinning from ear to ear!

Not surprisingly, Ethan did not nap at all that afternoon, and when we reached the hotel after dinner, Ethan had a really quick bath and fell asleep soon after.

Nope, our Christmas vacation ain’t over yet… 😛

Remember the comfortable king-sized bed in our Ramada Limited hotel room?  Well, we all overslept because of that!  Still it was a good thing because it was raining in the morning and there was nothing we could do about it. 

Oh yes, we greeted Christmas Day in San Diego with a rainy morning!  And Ethan greeted us with a jolly, “Santa, ho ho ho!”  He learnt that phrase from watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

We got up and went to the hotel lobby for breakfast.  Unfortunately the space was very small and only had 2 small tables.  We had to stand while we ate our breakfast.

Ethan had a leetle bit of waffles (I suspect it wasn’t too appetizing to him because it wasn’t the freshly-made kind, but the frozen-and-microwaved kind).  He had more fun pointing out the ribbons and baubles on the Christmas tree in the lobby…never mind that he accidentally spilled cranberry juice on the floor!

After breakfast, we quickly packed up and checked out, then drove to SeaWorld to continue our adventure there.  It was a considerably warm day, and absolutely excellent for photo-taking 🙂

We proceeded to view sealife exhibits which we had left out the day before, with Ethan demonstrating that he indeed had a good night’s rest!  Our boy was actively running all over the place!

Sometimes it was hard to make him leave a particular place he loved, and we had to use all sorts of tactics to convince him to.  And sometimes,…well…I just whipped out the camera and took random shots. LOL

The day before, while we were rushing to see one of the shows in SeaWorld, I caught a glimpse of the pink flamingos, but we didn’t have a chance to stop by till the second day.  Look what a pretty picture they make!

For a quarter, visitors could buy some grains (I think) to feed the flamingos and these were dispensed from a nearby machine.  I thought it would be a fun experience for Ethan, so we got some flamingo feed and started throwing the food at the flamingos.

Unfortunately, since the flamingos were too far away, and we could not throw that far, the ducks which were nearer to the bridge where we stood, walloped all the food!

We tried to view as many kinds of sealife as possible, including starfish, eels and sharks, but Ethan soon became rather restless and asked for “Elmo!  Elmo!”  Aaahhh…he remembered!

We headed back to the Sesame Street Bay of Play, where Ethan had loads of fun playing on the rides and running through the obstacle course.  And Daddy was with him all the way!

We bade a fond farewell to SeaWorld after that, but not before we got a polar bear soft toy as a souvenir for Ethan. 🙂

He loves it, and sometimes he would ask for his polar bear when he is ready to go to bed.

Most of the restaurants were closed for Christmas, but we finally found a nice Thai restaurant nearby, which served really authentic Thai food.  Ethan loved the food, and that was sufficient for me.

After lunch, our next stop was a good 30 minutes’ drive away up north to Legoland in Carlsbad, CA.  Meanwhile, Ethan had a nice nap in the car (after the SeaWorld adventure and the big lunch). 

Don’t ask me how he managed to remove his right shirt sleeve that way, with the seat belts buckled up!

When we arrived at Legoland, it was already about 3:00p.m., and although the park was to close at 5:00p.m. that day, we went in anyway.  Good thing we did too, cuz there weren’t many people queueing up for the rides then. 

Almost everything was built out of Lego, it was amazing.  Ethan requested for a few photos with some of his favorite characters too.

Actually he was the one who spotted Bob the Builder, and when we were done with the picture, he even said, “Buhbye Bob!” 🙂

Ethan definitely LOVES playing with Lego, and if we had left him in the children’s play area for the whole night, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded!

We have no regrets visiting Legoland, albeit for only two hours.  Ethan had the opportunity to ride on several fun rides, and was hopping around happily and grinning from ear to ear after each ride.

Our boy is exactly 36″ tall, which was the minimum height allowed for most of the rides, although he had to ride with a chaperone.  He even went on some rides that had a good possibility of him getting wet (he didn’t but, Daddy did), and he was also happy to ride on one that included a speedy, slopy descend!  Pete said Ethan was not afraid at all!

He also got into some of the Lego-built toy cars and commanded them to “MOVE!”

There was a fireworks display that evening at Legoland, and we watched it before we left.  We also had to promise Ethan we would be back the next day, only then was he willing to leave.

We then checked into our “home” for the next 2 nights: La Quinta Inn (king-sized bed also, yippee!), and headed out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant not too far away.

That night, Ethan fell asleep before 9:00p.m.  Couldn’t really blame him though, cuz the bed was really really comfy 🙂

It was a really wonderful Christmas Day we had as a family and one we would never ever forget!

We were checking out of the tiny hotel in Anaheim today!  Yay! 😛

We got ready for breakfast as usual, and wonder of wonders, Ethan actually willingly ate the waffles I had made!  The hotel breakfast area had three waffle makers, and although I had diligently queued up the past two mornings to make hot waffles, he didn’t want them till today!  Maybe it’s because the waffles I made on the third day looked way more pleasing to the eye.  Anyways, I’m so glad he loved them!

We then checked out at about 10:15a.m. and drove further down south to San Diego.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to SeaWorld, right before lunchtime.  Ethan was very excited about SeaWorld, we could tell, because we’d told him he would get the chance to see whales, dolphins, sharks, fish, sealions and other sea animals.  Of course he repeated the names of these animals to the tee.  Even as we were walking in the parking lot towards the SeaWorld entrance, Ethan was very happy to see seagulls and kept chasing after them, giggling and shouting loudly, “Bird!  Bird!”

We noticed SeaWorld had a new section built since Pete’s and my last visit there some years back.  They now had a children’s play area called Sesame Street Bay of Play, and guess what Ethan said as soon as he saw it?

“Elmo! Elmo!”

So we stopped by for a spell, and Ethan enjoyed running around for a bit, and he even rode the Elmo’s Flying Fish ride with Pete!  Little did we know that this was going to be one of many rides he was gonna take!

We had to hurry on to catch some shows in the other areas in SeaWorld, but we promised Ethan we would be back to see Elmo the next day (we bought the 2-day park tickets, see?).

So before lunch we managed to catch two shows:

• a 4-D Sesame Street presentation (where we had to wear those special glasses).  I was afraid Ethan would not be used to it, but he was all right, and during some parts of the show, he reached out his hands to *grab* the things he saw too!
• “Believe” at Shamu Stadium – This was the famous killer whale show that everyone would not want to miss.  We are so glad to share it with Ethan and he really had a good time.  Oh yeah, he learnt to say “Shamu” too! 🙂

We had lunch at one of the restaurants in SeaWorld, Shipwreck Reef Café, and I was pleased to see Ethan having a very healthy appetite that day.  He had hot dog (just the sausage, which he walloped in record time), fries (but of course!), chocolate milk and crackers.

There was a nearby pond too, and after lunch, Ethan was happy just to look at and interact with the ducks swimming in the pond.

We caught a few more other shows after that, including of course the Dolphin Discovery show.

We also watched Clyde and Seamore’s Risky Rescue, which showcased a sealion, an otter and a walrus.  That was pretty entertaining.  Other than sea animals, there was also a Pets Rule!  show which had dogs and cats and pigs.  Because it was the Christmas season, there were also a couple of shows themed especially for Christmas, namely Clyde and Seamore’s Night Before Christmas and Shamu’s Holiday Night.  We watched both, though it practically rained throughout the Clyde and Seamore Christmas show.  We had to take shelter viewing some indoor exhibits after that while waiting for the rain to stop.  ‘Twas a good reason anyway for Ethan to see his “polar bears” and “penguins”. 🙂

Thank goodness the rain stopped, because Shamu’s Holiday Night was really an unforgettable experience.  The sight of whales swimming gracefully to the strains of Christmas music beautifully played live on the saxophone and accompanied by a choir of magnificent singers was enough to wow us all. 

Ethan was also taken in by all the magic and music and he began dancing around and clapping to the music, but when Silent Night was played, our boy eventually fell asleep! LOL

We called it a day after that spectacular show and drove to a nearby Chinese eatery to tarpow dinner back to our hotel.  We checked into Ramada Limited and we loved our room at first glance: there was a king-sized bed in it!  Ethan fell asleep at around 9p.m. to recharge for the next day.