Birthday at Legoland

Spring break always happens right around Dallin's birthday. So this year we decided to take a short weekend trip to Chicago to take the boys to the Legoland Discovery Center. On the drive up there, Dallin got to open his first birthday present from his Easton grandparents: The Lego Movie.

They were silently glued to the screen for the rest of trip.

When we arrived, Dallin could see the Lego logo on the building and got very excited because he thought we were going to a Lego store. It was a little bit cooler than that.

Now, I've never been to Legoland in California or a similar place before, but I knew that this Discovery Center wouldn't be on quite the same grand scale as the theme park. I DID think it would be a little bigger though for the money we paid and have more than two rides. I forget that things cost a lot more in big cities and that we are so used to not spending our money. Every time Mckay or I felt a little underwhelmed by the experience, we reminded each other that this was for the kids. And our kids had a wonderful time.

There was a replica of the Chicago skyline made from Legos.

And a rainforest filled with lego animals.

They liked the hippo.

Dallin was VERY excited to see Darth Vader.

 And R2-D2.

We watched the short 4D movie (the boys were not impressed with the 3D glasses and kept taking them off) and went on the two rides.

There was a big play area with tunnels/slides and big foam bricks for building with. There were tables for building with duplo blocks and tables for building with regular Lego bricks.

We built several different models of cars and then put them to the test on the track.

Most of them crashed into pieces at the bottom of the ramp but Mckay managed to build a pretty sturdy car.

We ate lunch at the cafe there. The website said that outside food would not be allowed and that we could buy sandwiches there for $3.

This is how big a $3 sandwich is. One piece of bread folded in half with a slice of turkey on it.... No cheese, just turkey. They did have closer to normal-sized sandwiches for purchase at $8-$10 each. 

*sigh* "This is for the kids. This is for the kids..."

We bought a few sandwiches and shared a tiny snack size bag of chips for $1.

We were pretty hungry by dinnertime. We left Legoland and drove to the nearby hotel we had booked for the night. Then we picked up our dinner: a 30 inch pizza.

I don't remember how exactly this idea came to us a few weeks before the trip. We were talking about how we should get pizza in Chicago because Dallin loves pizza and Chicago has great deep dish pizza. Then we thought about how some places sell really big pizzas, so we did some searching to find the biggest pizza available in Chicago. Bacci Pizzeria won with 30 inches. That's almost as tall as Connor.

And this was GOOD pizza too. Good sauce, good cheese, nice crust, better than most chain delivery pizza places. It cost $35 and we had leftovers for a week, but it was totally worth it.

We spent the night at our Homewood Suites hotel. (Suites are the way to go when you have kids at a hotel. The kids slept in the living room on the sofa bed and we got our own space in a separate bedroom, with Bennett in the pack 'n play.) We ate a big breakfast at the hotel, had a relaxing morning and went to the nearby mall to walk around/play before driving home. We all had a really fun time. And now we'll have to go to the real Legoland sometime. 

Colorado after Christmas

We spent the week after Christmas 2014 in Colorado. Since it's only an 8 hour drive from Utah to Denver, Bennett and I drove with the rest of the family. Bennett did great. We stopped twice for bathroom/gas breaks and I fed Bennett during both stops. Other than that, Bennett slept peacefully in his car seat. Dallin and Connor watched movies for most of the trip and danced for part of it.

Bennett was blessed at church in Colorado. We figured it made more sense to do his blessing when we were out visiting family, rather than have our family make an extra trip to Indiana.

My amazing parents and my brother Joseph drove from Utah to be there for it. The words of the blessing were beautiful and it was wonderful being surrounding by so many people who love us.

After church, Connor took a nap with his dad.

During our stay, we spent a lot of time with family, playing games and doing fun things. We took the boys to Casa Bonita for the first time.

I forgot how gross the food is. The boys didn't care about eating and had a wonderful time.

On New Years Eve, we did another soda taste test. 

This time it was Coke vs. Pepsi. The goal was to see how well we could tell the difference between the two. Given 4 cups of soda randomly filled with either soda (so you might have 1 Pepsi 3 Cokes, or 2 of each, or 3 Pepsi 1 Coke), you had to tell which drink was in each of your 4 cups. Mckay and I both got 100% right. Most were surprised by how difficult it was to tell the difference. I, who am not a big soda drinker, was surprised by how easily I could tell the difference. 

We did Easton family pictures too while we were all together.

This is not one of the professional pictures, just a cute one I snapped of my boys all dressed up.

It snowed a lot, so we spent some time out playing in the snow, and lots of time snuggled up inside.

This picture makes me laugh.

Three generations of Eastons napping.

We went to an Avalanche hockey game again like last year, but this time we had Bennett with us. I carried him in the moby wrap so he stayed plenty warm and safe. He slept through the first two periods, ate during the third, pooped during overtime and was wide awake for the shoot out.

We sat all the way up at the top of the arena so we had a little more privacy. The noise up that high wasn't too loud for Bennett, unless you count his own father and uncles screaming and cheering a few feet away.

The Avs won so it was a good game.

Our travel plans for Denver back to Indiana:  Bennett and I flew from Denver to St. Louis on my birthday. (Not one person at the airport who checked my ID that day wished me a happy birthday! Maybe that's because I flew out at 6 AM again. People are grumpy in the morning, especially at the airport.) Mckay dropped me off at the airport and then drove for 12 hours to St. Louis. I beat him there and hung out with Grace again. The next morning we left Grace's house and drove home. The drive back to Indiana was much more uneventful than our drive last year, though I did leave my travel case of baby wipes in the Taco Bell bathroom in Effingham, IL. Darn Effingham! Thank you Bennett for waiting to poop again until we got home. 

Christmas 2014

Christmas 2014 was magical. My parents rented a cabin for the week in Heber City, Utah and all of my siblings and their spouses and children were there. We were glad that we gathered in Utah this year, since that made it a easier for us to travel from Indiana to be there. Since Bennett was barely three weeks old when we began our Christmas break, I knew it would be difficult to drive 24 hours across the country with a newborn. So we came up with a 4 day travel plan: 

Day 1 (Wednesday): we left Indiana right after Dallin got out of school and drove to St. Louis. My good friend Grace was happy to let us stay with her, as always. Day 2: Mckay left St. Louis that morning and drove with the two older boys to arrive in Denver that night. They stayed with Mckay's parents. Bennett and I spent the day with Grace in St. Louis. Day 3 (Friday): I flew out of St. Louis at the not-so-bright and early time of 6am and and arrived in Salt Lake before noon. I spent the day with my mom and two of my sisters getting food/supplies purchased for our week long stay at the cabin. (I'm not sure why we thought it was a good idea to go to Costco on the Friday before Christmas with 3 kids, two being newborns, to buy a weeks worth of food for 40 people. It was crazy busy but we had a some good laughs.)  Mckay took Friday as a day to rest in Denver and visit with family for a bit before driving the final 8 hour leg of the trip to Utah. Day 4: Mckay left Denver and drove to Heber with Dallin and Connor. The rest of the Crapo Family (or most of them) arrived by Saturday night.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the house we stayed in. It was huge with tons of bedrooms and several bunk beds in each room. There was a hot tub, a sand volleyball court, a Foosball table and a pool table, several big living areas for everyone to visit and play, a huge kitchen and, while no table known to man could fit all 40+ people, this table could usually fit most of the little kids.

Julie and Christian (my sister and her husband) once again made a lot of the magic happen for the kids.

They brought an art easel, a train set, gingerbread housed to decorate, lots of dessert projects for the older grandkids, and a new Christmas book to read every night. They were always plenty to do. And there was plenty of snow so the kids got to do lots of playing outside.

Bennett and his cousin Annabel are only 3 weeks apart (she's older), so they did a lot of the same things: eating every 2-3 hours, dirtying diapers, sleeping in whatever set of arms was available.

They shared things too, like the bouncy chair and their pacifiers. (The pacifier sharing was unintentional, but all the pacifiers looked similar and with 15 other adults helping to care for the babies, no one could keep them straight.)

We did a few fun activities outside the house, like riding on the Heber Creeper North Pole Express.

We got to drink hot chocolate, eat cookies, sing carols and meet Santa!

The kids were all pretty hyped up.

As if the sugar-filled, Santa-excited kids crammed into a train car weren't enough to give all the adults a headache, they gave everyone a jingle bell. Now there were 80 jingle bells ringing right by your head. Fun times! It was actually pretty fun, but there's a reason why Christmas only comes once a year.

While we had all the family there, my parents hired a photographer to take family pictures.

Here's grandma and grandpa with all 17 grand kids, ages 13 years -3 weeks.

Me with my siblings.

 The whole group

Well, we're one short in this picture. My sister's husband had a last minute change in work schedule, so he couldn't be there for pictures. I hear there's a plan to photoshop him in later.

And here is our family.

I just love these two cute boys.

On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional talent show, complete with lots of singing and the best Louis Armstrong impersonation I've ever heard. (Well done Joseph!)

We gave the kids candy canes

and then sent them to bed so we Santa could fill the stockings.

I think we got a few hours of sleep before the kids woke up on Christmas morning.

All of the kids got a light saber in their stockings.

We did a round of opening presents. With so many people, it took a long time, so we had a breakfast break.

We ate delicious Kneaders french toast and home-cured bacon, all prepared by Nate.

Then it was back to presents!

Dallin's presents were mostly Star Wars themed.

And Connor got a stuffed minion!

It was a wonderful Christmas.

Washington D.C. - The National Mall

We spent a good amount of time at the National Mall. For those who are confused (as I was the first time hearing it), the National Mall is not full of stores for shopping, it's an outdoor national park that houses many famous memorials and monuments. 

We saw the Washington Monument.

And then the boys started break dancing for no reason. 

It was extremely cute.

We gazed up at the tall monument for a while. 

We got lunch from some of the many food trucks parked right by the mall.

 

This was my first exposure to food trucks and I know that's a small sample size, but I was not impressed. The food was decent (nothing spectacular) and way overpriced. Maybe it's just because we were in D.C. where I'm sure the cost of food is way more than Indiana, but that's still no excuse to charge 9 bucks for a simple cheese quesadilla. At least that price included a soda!

We walked from the Washington Monument across the rest of the mall to the Lincoln Memorial.

The Lincoln memorial is that building waaaaay off in the distance.

We passed the war memorials on the way. 

The World War II memorial.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

I think this memorial is beautiful and Dallin enjoyed tracing the letters in the names of the soldiers.

He was busy finding all the "D" letters.

 The Korean War veterans memorial.

It was a very sobering experience to be reminded of the wars and all the people who fought to protect our country in those wars. I felt extreme gratitude for those soldiers, especially when surrounded by other tourists who seemed less than grateful. At the Korean War memorial, we overheard one person say, "Wow, they'll make a memorial for anything, won't they?" Yes, when hundreds of thousands of people go to war (including my own grandpa) to protect the freedom of others, I think that merits a memorial and a little respect. 

The Lincoln Memorial.

Connor seemed less than impressed by it. I think he was hot and sick of walking by this point. He was in the stroller for half the time, and carried on shoulders for another quarter of it, so I had little sympathy for his fatigue.

The view from the Lincoln Memorial, looking back across the mall to the Washington Monument. 

Last stop was the White House. 

It doesn't seem like it in the picture because of the zoom on the camera, but we were about 1/2 mile away from the White House. That is the closest we were allowed to get. (Seriously, I took one step closer on the grass across the imaginary line and was told by the secret service to step back please.) Apparently, they close the lawn in front of the White House for various security reasons at any given time. The secret service officer we talked to wasn't at liberty to say why, but just that it happens from time to time. Weird... 

On the walk back, we stopped to let Dallin get a Spongebob popsicle.

It was $3 (more food truck rip offs!!) but so worth it to see him enjoy it. It only took 5 baby wipes to clean up the resulting stickiness.

That was the end of our trip! Every day was long and exhausting (and hot!) but we got to see some really cool places learn a lot of American history. And we checked some things off our summer list!