...let's pause for a bit here. I feel like this Bucket List is going to be an ancient relic or something. A huge unrolled scroll (of Costco butcher paper) taped to a closet door with scotch tape, with scriptures of desired things to do and places to go written carefully in multiple colors of Crayola Markers. Someday in 300 years, scientists might unearth it, and marvel at the places that no longer exist, and wonder what ancient civilization "Stock Car Races" is.
Anyways.
On our bucket list the boys wrote "San Diego" and "Legoland", in hopes that we could muster up one more trip down to our favorite sunshiny city, and throw in one of their favorite theme parks to boot. Unfortunately, with the government shutdown earlier in the year, we had written off San Diego as an impossible financial feat. However, the boys kept it on the List, ever hopeful that maybe a miracle might happen. I mean, way to stay positive, you know.
Luckily, we received a lot more from our tax return than we anticipated, and I picked up a couple extra cleaning jobs, so we decided that we would surprise the boys with a trip to San Diego over spring break, and then surprise them even more by going to Legoland for Calen's 10th birthday. Besides, we are going to need some Vitamin D and some beach time before we move to Alaska where the closest thing to beach time is a polar bear plunge.
Except, Calen's birthday was the week after spring break. So for the third surprise we decided we would wake them up for school the Monday after spring break and announce that we were going to San Diego.
Cue the big show.
We set the clocks in the house to 7am (when really it was 5:30am) to make it look like they were getting ready for school like normal. I woke the boys up, had them get dressed and do their morning list as usual, and then they sat down to eat dinner while I stood at my usual morning post (the bar directly in front of the coffee machine, because obviously) and casually said as they ate their oatmeal:
"You know what, I think we should go to San Diego....(no real response from them)...RIGHT NOW."
Immediately after "right now" their heads jolted in unison to me. "Wait, are you serious?" Calen asked. "Like we are going to skip school?!" Cam shouted gleefully. And then I said "Want to go to Legoland?" And their eyeballs literally fell out of their faces, and then Brad walked in from the garage (the boys thought he was at work) saying "Let's go the car is packed!" And the boys jumped for joy.
But, we had business to attend to first. Since we were going to be gone for a full week, Calen had some birthday celebrating to do beforehand. So we sat him up on the table (that we had decorated the night before in preparation) like we always do, took a picture with his birthday banner, and let him open his gift from one set of grandparents (a huuuuge big kid (i.e. adult) telescope), a small gift from his brother (a How To Train Your Dragon play set), and a birthday card from us announcing that his gift from us was a shopping spree at the Big Lego Store in Legoland on his birthday.
And then, we threw ourselves in the car and drove the 10.5 hours to San Diego. Not a whole lot of photoshoots for that time, but you get the picture. Tablet playing, movie watching, snacks, bathroom breaks, traffic, etc.
We rolled in to San Diego just in time to watch their "cousin" Joshua (he isn't a cousin, but they are such close Coast Guard friends our boys and their boys call each other cousins) play in his baseball game, and then went back to their house for the first night of many nights of trampoline jumping, Nerf shooting awesomeness.
Welcome to paradise.
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| Watching his "cousin" play baseball |
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