Spring Break 4/4-4/6/11

Well, it's spring break time! We are already to have some time to rest, relax, and have some fun. My father-in-law is going to be here most of the spring break time. The kids are very anxious for him to be here, so I decided Monday was a day to keep them busy so they don't nag me. ;-)

The first thing on the agenda was making monkey bread. I LOVE monkey bread, but don't usually make it (it has been forever since I have made it!). I will be making it for my class when we talk about the zoo, so I figured this was a good refresher, and tasty, for me. The kids rolled the pieces in the cinnamon and sugar and put it in the pan. I poured the hot, melted butter on top and baked it. The kids were pretty proud of their tasty creation! :-)Next came arts and crafts time. A few weeks before, I was at Hobby Lobby and saw that their Easter foam craft kits were 50% off so I grabbed a couple of them. First they made crosses. The crosses are hanging on most of our kitchen cabinets and taped to many of our windows as well.
The other kit I got was Easter eggs. There were various shapes and decorations for the kids to stick on the eggs. Think they had fun???? The eggs wrapped all the way around my kitchen counter! :-)
Tuesday we went to the airport and picked up my father-in-law.
Wednesday we headed over to the Chicago area. Marc wanted to go to IKEA, so we added a trip to Legoland since it was only a few minutes for IKEA. Our hotel package included 4 passes to Legoland. There were 5 people in our group. We were going to go to Legoland on Thursday (Samantha's 3rd birthday), but under 3 is free, so we went on Wednesday instead. ;-) Some of the things they built out of Legos are amazing!! To see more pictures, head over to our pictures website to see them. But here are a few of the kids.
There is a 4-D Bob the Builder show. It was Samantha's first 4-D show (at least since she has been old enough to care). We were sure how she would react to things coming out of the screen at her and being squirted with water. She loved it!! She was say "oh, no!' when Lego towers fell over and "into" the audience and grabbing for things. (Great sign for our trip to Disney World this summer!) Marc, as always, loves the 4-D shows. Even though this show was a lot basic for him, he still enjoyed it. :-)
There is also a replica of a Lego factory that we can "tour". We are in a room with replicas of all the machines for each process. For each process, a child volunteer got to come up and push the button to show how that part of the process works. Marc pushed the button for the second step.
On the last step, the tour guide told all the kids who had not already helped push a button to come up and push the last button all together.
Another section of Legoland is a room for building your own creations. Unfortunately, you have to leave them there. :-( But,on the bright side, there was even a small Princess room!!!! Samantha and I got to build a Princess castle! :-)
Marc built a car. There are 3 different ramps in the room for the kids to race their car creations down. He had fun racing some of the other kids and their cars. His car held u pretty well through several crashes. :-)
We had lunch, ran to Costco to buy me a new book, went to IKEA, and had dinner. After that long day, we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep. Thursday morning we woke up, sang Happy Birthday to Samantha and started our drive back home. My geeky husband had to stop at a store called Fry's on the way home. It is a HUGE electronics store, so big it even has a cafe in the middle! I told him we could go on one condition......he buy me lots of new sticky notes. ;-) If you know me, you know I love my sticky notes. ;-) So, we made it home in time to take Samantha out for her birthday dinner to "the peanut place", otherwise known as Logan's. (See next post for more on that)