One of our favorite pics from vacation

Fedora snapped this shot as Cameron decided he had enough of the cold water. 

New aquarium

There's a new aquarium with a few nicely down exhibits right next to the main park at Legoland. Probably not worth visiting on its own, but if you're going to Legoland, definitely worth checking out some of the innovative views of the sea creatures the designers have managed to create.

Water park

Colin and Ryan had a blast at the water park this summer. The water was pretty cold, but it was a hot day in Carlsbad. They eventually worked up to the nerve to stand underneath the big bucket of water.

If you've never seen it, it's an impressively large bucket of water that gets dumped on the kids every few minutes.

I love the reaction of the kid who turns around right after the water comes down. Also, go check out the stop-motion photos on Smugmug -- I finally got to use my little Canon's multiple-exposure feature, and it did all right for a point-and-shoot. :-)

New rides @ Legoland

There are a few new rides at the so-called Land of Adventure area inside Legoland. The kids enjoyed all of them, especially this one called the Beetle Bounce:

The Buzz Lightyear-like ride called the Lost Kingdom Adventure felt like it could have been made by ambitious camp directors (Anson?) for church summer camp -- that is, pretty good for amateurs, not that impressive for professionals. :-)

Legoland

Legoland wasn't quite as crowded (we went on a Wednesday), but they are still plagued by the slow-moving-line syndrome. Something about their rides and the way they pack people into them mean than even short-looking lines can go for 30-40 minutes.

On the plus side, this was the first year Cameron could actually ride some of the attractions, including the drive-your-own-cars which he treated more like bumper cars than a simulation of a city street.  :-)

Summer Vacation

We just got back from our last-week-of-summer-vacation jaunt to Disneyland and Legoland. You can see the pics on Smugmug. Here are a few teasers (along with the ones you can flip through on the right side now, thanks to Blogger's fancy-new-widgets -- go to Dashboard and click on "Make Blogger Draft my default homepage" to get yours).

Disneyland was crowded pretty much everyday this week, in case you were planning a trip of your own around this time. Without Fast Passes, I'm not sure we would have actually ridden that many attractions.

Back here in the real world, thankfully, lines move much faster (though there was a humdinger of a line trying to get out of the San Mateo Farmer's Market this morning at 10 am -- didn't see that one coming!).

Pastor Rick Warren

Set your Tivos!

Pastor Rick Warren of Purpose Driven Life fame will interview the presidential candidates one after the other at his church tomorrow.

CNN is carrying it at 5 pm Pacific time.

An article about the event:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/14/warren.forum/index.html

Program details:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/saturday.html

Colin turns 8

Colin just turned and is headed into 3rd grade. And he just lost his first baby tooth, which seems later than typical. But still, I'm not sure how we ended up with a 3rd grader already.

This year, in lieu of a party, we're going to Disneyland just before the school year starts up. Hopefully the mild summer will continue as we head down south.