Legoland

The day after Zahra's birthday, Saturday, a bunch of us went down to Legoland, which is in Carlsbad (about 30 minutes north of San Diego). Here's Zahra with her 8-year-old friend Alysha. (When we used to live on Warner, Alysha and her parents lived in the apartment next door to us.)

I thought it was fun to see Zahra and Alysha next to this Bob the Builder guy made out of Legos since it was about the same height the kids. It was interesting to see so many big things made out of millions of tiny little Lego pieces.

The previous night, Zahra started complaining of an earache. Then on Saturday, she seemed to be a little under the weather. She said that her ear still hurt, she had very little appetite, and most noticeable was her utter lack of energy. Usually she would be bouncing and running around, but on Saturday morning, she wanted to sit in my lap or be carried around as we waited in lines. She had been quite excited to go to Legoland, to the extent that she didn't even really care about going to Disneyland on her actual birthday. We had to explain, over and over again, that since she had school on Friday, it made more sense to go to Legoland on Saturday so that we could spend all day there (not to mention, it's our family tradition to go to the Happiest Place on Earth on our actual birthdays). She just kept asking, "Are we going to Legoland today?" the whole week! So above is a picture of her riding a little mechanical pony on a track, a little out of it. Just before she and Alysha waited in line for this, I had given her some Tylenol to try and help with the pain. But somehow, a little later in the day, she seemed to snap right out of it and she was almost back to her usual self.

Willie took this picture of Max and I love his expression!

The girls look tiny in this big huge chair...

the kids table - Zahra, Jordan, and Alysha

(Jordan is Willie's cousin Terrace's son; he's 2 years old)

She looks like she wants to say, "Do I have to blow out the candles?" They weren't trick candles or anything, but it took her about 3 or 4 tries to blow them all out.

Zahra next to her birthday guy sign. We had a party package and so we rented a room where we all had lunch and cake. It was fun to have an area where we could all sit and have the place to ourselves.

After lunch, the girls went on a "driving test." They have their hands raised up because someone asked over the loudspeaker if they all had their seat belts on. Notice there are no tracks. Even so, they were surprisingly few collisions.

But that's not to say there weren't any crashes! I think Zahra had a little trouble figuring out the gas and brake pedal situation.

The proud little birthday driver at the end of her "test." She got a license... just like everybody else. I can definitely wait until the real thing. For now, I would be happy for her to drive another little Volvo at Legoland.

At the end of the day, we went to Miniland and looked at all the mock cities that had been built. Here are some Washingtons (and others) taking a picture in Washington.

From left to right: (in the back row) Rachel and her son Jordan, Willie jr., then in the front are Teshauna and Alysha, Max and his mom, Bessie, Leland, Denise, William, and Willie sr. -- But where is the birthday girl?

We regrouped and took another picture, gaining the birthday girl, but losing a few others.

Overall, it was a really fun weekend. It was really great that so many people were able to come to Legoland with us to celebrate Zahra's birthday. It was nice to do an immediate-family outing on her actual birthday after school and then do another amusement park the next day with more family and friends.