California dreamin!

Okay, I’m sorry that I didn’t post last Sunday, but there was a good reason for it.

That’s right, we were in California!

We wanted to do something special for Elijah to celebrate his recovery. We knew we wanted to do something before he ever even had the surgery, but it took us a while to decide exactly what we wanted to do. About 2 weeks ago, we finally made up our minds to go to San Diego.

We looked at all kinds of options of different things we could do there and debated what would be the best. We knew he’d really like to go to Legoland, but there are so many great things to do in San Diego that we just weren’t sure if that was the only thing we should do or not. We ended up getting something called the San Diego City Pass, which actually provided admission to numerous activities and attractions, Legoland included. But with the city pass, there were other things we could do as well if we wanted to.

We packed up the van and on Sunday morning headed out to California. We wanted to get there as early as we could not only so we could find our way in the light, but also so we would hopefully have enough time to go to the beach that evening. We made it there late afternoon, and after checking into our hotel, went straight to the beach. Our hotel was only about 1 mile off of the beach, so it was very close. We didn’t walk to the beach from the hotel, but drove over and parked in some metered parking close by. It has been probably four years since Elijah had been to the ocean, and he didn’t remember it. This was Abigail’s first time ever going to the beach, so it was completely new for her. They were both a little uneasy right at the start, but didn’t take long till they were playing in the water and sand.

That first night, they did each fall in the water once and got tumbled around a bit by the current. It was good enough to scare them so they wouldn’t go too far, but wasn’t scary enough to keep them out of the water. The water was a bit chilly, but a quick dip in the hot tub at the hotel warmed them right up.

We headed over to In-N-Out for dinner, which was right across the street from the hotel.

We all slept in one hotel room, in two queen beds. Elijah and Abigail shared a bed, which was a bit rough the first night, but was better the next two nights.

The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel, and then headed out to Legoland. It was a Monday and the park wasn’t very busy, which is what we were planning on. The weather was overcast and probably mid-70s as the high, so it was a perfect day to be out and about. I won’t get into all the details about the day because we did a lot, but the primary focus of the day was going around to all of the rides and trying to ride every one in the park. I think we did all but one, and there were a couple that were closed that we couldn’t ride. One really good thing about Legoland, is it’s geared towards young kids, so Abigail was able to ride most of the rides as well. She actually enjoyed the roller coasters more than Elijah did. She’s our little daredevil! Here are some videos and pictures of our time at Legoland.

We stayed at Legoland until closing time that first day. Then, we headed to the beach.

We didn’t have as long that second night, before heading back to the hotel and having pizza in our room for dinner.

We debated what to do the second day, since our pass would let us do so many different things. We decided that it would probably be best just to do Legoland again because the kids had such fun the first day, among other reasons. So the next morning we had our breakfast and headed over to Legoland for the second time. We decided not to stay as long on the second day, so that we would have more time to spend at the beach that afternoon. Legoland was even quieter on Tuesday. It almost felt as if we had the park to ourselves. In fact, on most rides we could just stay on for multiple rides because nobody else was in line. That was really nice.

Then we headed to the beach in the afternoon. This day was sunny, but a big cooler so it was comfortable standing around in the sunshine, especially with our feet in the cool ocean water. We decided to have dinner at a restaurant at the end of the pier that night.

Now this was actually a little challenging, just because we were a little tired of being on our feet, and it was pretty cool out. We were all a bit wet from playing in the ocean, and the sun was down. Also we were getting the breeze from the ocean blowing strongly over the pier. Needless to say we were all a bit chilly on that walk, and it’s a fairly long pier, so the walk took a while. The restaurant had a beautiful view of the ocean, and with a 50s diner theme, it was a fun place to eat. There even happened to be a man there making balloon animals and creations for the kids. Elijah got a ninja, and Abigail got a Parrot in a heart.

The next morning was Wednesday morning, which happened to be Halloween day. We wanted to leave early enough so that we could get home to go trick or treating. We had our final breakfast at the hotel, packed up, and headed out. We made it home in time to unpack the van, and get set up for trick or treating.

That was a fun few days, and very special ones. Elijah was very sad to leave California, and has not stopped talking about it since.

I should also add that it really was a true celebration of his recovery. And what I mean by that is he used his legs almost the entire time. We took a wagon to Legoland with us both days thinking that he would get tired out and would want to ride for much of it, but he barely used it at all. He didn’t use a walker or his wheelchair at all, and rarely even complained about his legs hurting. He did a great job and we got good use out of those legs!

Oh, and we took the week off of school, so we didn’t have to worry about that at all. We start back tomorrow, and back to our normal routine.