adventures with mayer and grayson: July 2011

mayer had no idea that 45 minutes east of here there is a magical place (not as magical as disneyland but to a 5 year old boy with enough legos to last a lifetime, a very magical place). friends of ours that live up near ramstein asked if we wanted to join them on a trip to legoland a few weekends ago. we didn't tell mayer until the night before and even then we don't think he fully understood what was waiting for him the next morning.

so we hopped in the car and drove through the insane rain and thunder and lightning, hoping the patch of clear sky up ahead was over legoland. it was...sort of, on and off throughout the day. but who is gonna let some rain stand between them and lego overload? on the bright side, there was practically no one there.

we got there shortly after it opened at 10am and left right before closing at 7pm. mayer and gabe (our friends' three-year old) ran non-stop the entire time we were there. they went on every ride they could...most of them 2 or 3 times. they played in every play area. i'm pretty sure we saw every square inch of the park...twice. poor grayson wasn't quite big enough to go on any ride so he enjoyed legoland from the comfort of his stroller. and thoroughly enjoyed the play areas. grayson fell asleep for about an hour and both mayer and gabe stayed strong until we got in our cars to go home. neither one of them made it out of the parking lot awake.

it was a great day with friends and a great family day. we will be visiting legoland again soon.

troy and mayer are under the "an"

too busy looking for the next ride to look at what's in front of them

mayer got a jr. drivers license after this course

this one just about sums up the whole day - look at that smile!

capt. grayson

peddle cars in the rain, what a dad!

***update - since i haven't posted this one yet - why, i don't know - but we have gone back one more time. troy had a "training day" (code for day off) so what better thing to do than hit legoland while all the germans are hard at work? yeah...the place was packed and it was a hot day. but this time all the play areas had their water features on since it wasn't cold and raining. so after a solid morning of riding rides, the boys changed into their swimsuits and ran around until i couldn't take it anymore. it was crazy hot. i would have stripped down if i had seen any other parents running around through the water but it was just munchkins. maybe next time.

yeah....i know it's been a while. thank goodness i take pictures everywhere we go or i would have no idea what has happened since the last time i posted :0)

i'm just going to go through my pictures and go in order of what i have. so, up first is barefoot park or barfusspark if you live here. there are a few of these parks throughout europe but there are several in germany and 3 or 4 within a reasonable distance from us. the one we went to was about 40 minutes from here. the idea of the park is sort of what the name implies...you check your shoes at the door (or the locker since the park is outside and there is no door). you go on a hike through the forest...barefoot. we started off through water, then a little hike on mulch and grass to the forest and throughout the forest there were various fun things to walk through - rocks (smooth, lava, little, big, etc), seashells, glass, pine needles, mud, sand (welcomed relief), etc. it was actually a lot of fun. grayson wouldn't agree with me and was carried through the whole thing. mayer loved it. and at the end there was a small biergarten but we opted for ice cream.