Father's Day Weekend

 

This weekend we celebrated Bryan for being the greatest husband and Daddy we could ever imagine.  And just what does the perfect guy want to do for his special weekend?  He wants to surprise his kids with a trip to LegoLand and the Sea Life Aquarium!  That is just one of the things that makes him so great.

Here is a photo of Mia just as we arrived in Dallas.  She had no idea what was going on, but I guess she could just feel the excitement.

LegoLand was amazing!  We are definitely going to have to go back.  The kids loved it!  I wish I could have taken more photos, but it was pretty crowded.  Here is Austyn playing in the entrance.  There were piles of Legos set up for the kids to play with while they waited to get into the Lego Factory.  In the Lego Factory, the kids have to generate energy by jumping up and down.  This powers up the factory to make Lego bricks.  They got to see the process, and when it was finished, they each got their own special brick.

When we left the factory, we entered Lego Land.  The land of Legos!  Everything, and I mean everything was made of Legos!  Our first stop was a ride called Kingdom Quest.  The kids and Bryan rode in a cart through the land of "Lego bad guys "  They had to shoot them to earn points.  They loved it!!

In the background, you can see Lego City Play Zone and Fire Academy.  It is a play land with tunnel slides (built of Legos) and a Lego pit with giant Legos for building.  Austyn was a just a little bit too short to enter this play zone, but Gannon had a blast.  He raced in so quickly that he didn't even notice Austyn was not allowed in.  When he did notice, though, he came to play with her in the smaller one.  What a great brother!! 

I couldn't get any photos of him in there because he was so dang fast!  Ha :)



Here is Austyn playing in the smaller Lego pit called Duplo Village.


Mimi, check it out!  Mia even found an elephant!



After they played with the Legos for a while, Gannon and Bryan got in line for another ride, Merlin's Apprentice. 

Austyn and I went to Princess Palace.  Here, there was a karaoke stage and tables full of legos.  The princesses were to build their own microphones and then sing on the stage.  Austyn had lots of fun building, but I could not get her near the stage!  Very unlike her ;)

Here are Gannon and Bryan enjoying Merlin's Apprentice.  The faster the pedaled, the higher they went.  I love the excitement on both their faces!

Here is Miniland.  This is where they have built downtown Dallas completely of Legos!  They even built Rangers Ballpark in Arlington!

Finally, we made it to the gift shop.  The kids are standing in front of the Lego wall.  It looks like a candy shoppe!  At this wall, you can build your own bag of Legos.  There were so many colors!

On to Sea Life Aquarium!!

This is one of my favorite photos of the day!  These are shore fish, so they have to stimulate waves.  Just as soon as he walked up to the fish, a big rush of water came gushing out from this hole.  His reaction was priceless!

Here, they got to hold starfish and sea shells.

I know that seems like a pretty packed day, but the fun and surprises aren't over yet!  That's right, there's more!

See, two of their favorite cousins live just outside of Dallas, in Keller.  Boy, were they surprised and excited to see each other!  They stayed up until 2am.  Yes, 2:00 AM!  They were just too excited to settle down.  I cannot believe that after such a long day (with basically no naps) that they were still functioning with no melt downs!
 

Sunday morning, all the kiddos were awake by 8.  Yes, that's right.  Six hours of sleep.  Boy, this is going to be a long day!  My kids sleep later than that when they go to bed at a normal time!  But, again, they were fine.  I guess they were running on adrenaline.

That morning, we had a Father's Day pancake breakfast.  It was great!  I wish I had pictures, but to be completely honest, it never crossed my mind to take the camera out.  Oops :(

Oh well, on to the game!  This was the reason for our trip.  The kids and I got Bryan tickets to the Rangers for Father's Day.  Earlier in the week, Bryan suggested we try to catch a game this weekend, so I had to blow the surprise.  Otherwise we would have ended up with two sets of tickets!

When we first got there, the heat was just miserable.  I was so worried about Mia, and just knew that we would spend most of the game walking the halls where it was cooler.  Within about twenty minutes of finding our seats, a huge cloud settled right over the stadium, and stayed there for the whole game!  Whew!  It ended up being really great!!

Happy Father's Day, Bryan!  Thank you for all you do for us!  We couldn't ask for better!

Thank you, Daddy for teaching me by your example, and thank you, Bryan, for not only living up to it, but for teaching our kids as well!  I love you both, so, so much!