Five o'clock in the morning and time to wake the boys. Molloy wakes up happy no matter what, (she goes to bed happy, sleeps happy, poops happy, and is even sad happy), but with the boys we never know what we are going to get...Pebbles, Bam-Bam, or anything in between.
Fortunately, after years of Kerrie's effective military training learned from her father's Marine drill sergeant background (but mostly inherited from her mother), the boys wake up, get dressed, brush teeth, and are ready before Mom and Dad can ask, "Whose children are these?". But they are, after all, going on vacation. The Durango was pre-packed the night before, we pile in and make our way to JFK. We are a family of five now and traveling with 3 kids under the age of 7 is very different than no children at all.
Traffic is light. I drop off Kerrie, Daniel, and Molloy at the terminal to pre-check baggage (you've seen garbage trucks dumping their load at the land fill?), I bring Lev with me to long-term parking, catch the AirTrain to the terminal ("Dad, what's an air train?"), meet Kerrie at the gate, and enjoy six hours of drug-induced bliss as we sail across the country. I have no idea what the rest of my family was doing during that time.
An uneventful landing, baggage pickup, bus to the rental car agency, and we are now disappointed that the car won't hold all the kids and all the luggage. We spend an hour debating which we will leave behind (kids or luggage), but settle on a larger mini-van instead.
Going South
We travel 90 minutes south to Carlsbad, CA and check into a hotel just outside of LegoLand, which fortunately is a kid-friendly resort with a kid park and pool just outside our room and the perfect place for 3 kids who have been physically restrained for about 12 hours to release a full day's energy. (Imagine King Kong when he finally broke free of his chains in New York City. Make that two King Kongs and one Curious George.)
The next morning (which has been redefined to begin at about 4 a.m. due to the 3 hour time difference) is pretty much made up of Daniel begging to watch a movie, Lev begging to eat something, Molloy begging for attention, and Kerrie begging for a husband that could help out a little more, while we painfully wait 6 hours for the 10 a.m. opening of LegoLand.
The hotel has a shuttle service to the park. We spent about 30 minutes trying to help our teenage driver figure out how to install a car seat for Molloy while our 3 kids raise an uncomfortable ruckus in the hotel lobby; all while our driver secretly takes notes about the importance of birth control. After we jury-rig something that involves several sailor knots, a few granny knots, and the phrase, "hold this really tightly until we get there", he proceeds to literally drive us around the corner to the park entrance. He tells us we can either call him later for a ride back or we can just walk through the gate in the fence to our hotel, which I can now see is close enough for me to throw his car keys and hit it; which I contemplate after that wasted half hour.
LegoLand is a great park for kids under the age of 10. The rides are just big enough to excite them but not too big to scare them, almost everything is made of Legos (except the rides, thankfully), you don't feel like they are trying to sell you something everywhere you walk, and there are no lines at the rides because no one visits the park.
In the heart of the park, there is a "mini-land" where several major cities are duplicated with stock Legos. They have literally rebuilt New York City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. (including a full replication of the Obama inauguration and the Iwo Jima memorial), San Francisco, Hollywood, and the Daytona 500, not to mention Mt. Rushmore, the Sydney Opera House, and the Statue of Liberty.
Lev Takes Manhattan
Each building is an exact duplicate of a building in NYC and also included is the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty. If you laid all the Legos for the two bridges end to end it would stretch over 3 and a half miles. The older buildings are more interesting because they include all the ornate detail that architecture of that era employed.
Molloy Walks the Streets of Vegas
Most of the Las Vegas hotels are duplicated, including swimming pools filled with people (and sound effects of people playing and splashing in the pool). Treasure Island is shown here and the New York, New York Hotel is way in the background. Even the word "Treasure" is spelled out in different color Legos; it is not painted on.
The Obama Inauguration
In order to fully appreciate this, you have to know that even the flags are made of Legos and to know that each person in the crowd is constructed of Legos; in other words, they are not pre-cast Lego "people", but rather snapped together with individual Lego pieces. This was
supposedly complete before the actual inauguration and after the inauguration, Barrack and Michelle were switched out to reflect their actual wardrobes.
Molloy Gets Soaked on the Pirate Ride
Use the Force, Lev
Molloy Takes to the Skies...Sort of
That's a Mouthful
No Leash Law
Car Kit
This Volvo is a full size replica built on a real Volvo chassis. Only the tires are real. The "dotted lines" on the car are not poor picture quality, but are Lego edges. It took 3 builders almost three months to build.
Going North
We spent two days in LegoLand, but the second day was raw, windy, and cold (you know, the kind of weather we went to Southern California for). We left the park early the second day when it became apparent to us that it was Kerrie and I who were trying to keep them there for as much "last minute fun" as we could squeeze in, but it was not a good day to be outside and the kids were happy to leave.
Then we traveled two hours north to Monrovia, which is just outside of LA, to visit with Kerrie's Aunt Peppy, Uncle Don, Cousins Dana and Jimi, and their son Max. Californian real estate seems to be devoted to nothing but houses and highways. It seems like everyone's driveway empties onto a highway and they have no use for local roads. Entrance ramps are so busy they have traffic lights to manage the number of cars that can get on. And don't ever get into the car pool lane if you are within 100 miles of your exit because we got stuck in one and waved to our exit as we cruised on by, unable to get over to it due to the fast-moving heavy traffic. It's as if you need two or more people in your car to get into the car pool lane and they don't let you back into regular traffic unless you have less than two people in your car. Given that the only option was to have me or Kerrie (as drivers) be the soul occupant of the car to escape the car pool lane, which would require ejecting the children and having them bounce down the freeway like rubber balls , we decided to stay safely in the lane we were in. That is why our one-and-a-half hour trip took us two hours.
Their house is fabulous, but I particularly loved the outside pool, hot tub, and bar which were surrounded by some beautiful stone work. Don and Peppy's son David had just won a Grammy for exectuive producing a child's music CD. A great, great accomplishment and honor, but unfortunately it is one of the categories that is presented "earlier in the day", as opposed to him having the pleasure of hearing, "Presenting the Grammy for Executive Producer of a Children's CD is Jennifer Hudson". But I guess the good thing about that is they can't kick you off the stage for thanking too many people.
Going West
Next we traveled west for two hours to get to Santa Barbara. Yes, you can travel west from LA; check a map. We finally arrived at Kevin and Linda's on Tuesday night and the kids were excited to see their cousins, Nico and Aidan. We also saw Tracy and Scotty from Lompoc and they met Molloy for the first time.
We spent time at the local parks, listened to Daniel beg to play Aidan's video game, went to the Santa Barbara Zoo, took a ride up into the mountains, listened to Daniel beg to play a video game, went to the local toy-off-road vehicle park to watch Nico race his remote-controlled car around a dirt track, and listened to Daniel beg to play a video game.
One night, Nico baby sat the kids and the adults went out to dinner. But after dinner we were too old to know what to do with ourselves and all we could do was go back home.
We had a nice visit with my cousins Barbara and Henry in Oxnard about 45 minutes east of Santa Barbara. (Barbara is my grandfather's brother's daughter so I really don't know if she is my cousin, my aunt, my neice-in-law, or third tri-cousin-once-removed.) They gave gift bags to the kids and we had a nice lunch and a great visit. It was the first time they had met any of our kids, but I don't think they really met "our" kids because they behaved too wonderfully.
On Valentine's Day we had a nice dinner at Kevin and Linda's while Daniel begged us to play a video game.
Going East
Finally it was time to leave. We drove back to LA on Monday morning and dropped off the rental car. It wsa pouring rain and I was trying to unload the car of all our luggage while Kerrie started offloading the children, when all of a sudden a magical and mysterious thing happened. The Avis representative told us to stay in the car and HE WOULD DRIVE US TO THE TERMINAL! He considered the rain and the children and knew we were running a little late and he apparently had the authority to to make that decision. So we didn't have to fuss with transferring the luggage or the uncomfortable rental-car bus that makes you feel like a homely child being carted off to summer camp. It was like being back in Russia where simply traveling with a child was like a passport to heavenly perks and unheard of considerations. The following is not a paid advertisement...RENT AVIS.
The plane trip home was uneventful as each seat on the plane had their own personal video screen so the kids were entranced the whole way with 5 hours of Spongebob Squarepants. (By the way, he also has a square shirt but no one ever talks about that.)
Molloy had her first "vacation" and we went to so many places that every time we left somewhere she was saddened (happily, of course) that her vacation was over, and we had to explain to her that each new place we went to was part of the same vacation. It was also wonderful to introduce ("introduce" in Molloy's case, but "reinforce" in the boys case) our extended family. They have Cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Nanas and Grandpas and Bubbas and Harriets and that is a wonderful part for me to observe; knowing that they came from a Siberian orphanage and the closest they had to a family in the facility was a "caregiver".
Molloy was constantly referring to her cousins and her Uncle Kevin as her "friends", still not quite fully appreciating that "family" means more than Mom, Dad, and brothers. ("Where is my friend?", "I want to say 'good night' to my friend", "I want to play with my friend", "Dad, can I PLEASE play a video game?"...oh wait, that last one was Daniel.)
