Pictures Pictures Pictures

A few weeks ago we went to Legoland. The last time we went, Callie was just a tad bit too short to ride on any of the rides. Since I think the park is best suited for 3-4 yr olds, I figured we'd better hit it soon while it would still be exciting for her. While we are still a Disney family, Legoland was a nice change.

Here's Callie taking her driver's test and earning a license:
Emmy on the big kid track doing the same:

Daddy being goofy:

Like Father like Daughter:

We never do face painting, but the two times we've been to Legoland, we've done it, for whatever reason:

The next week, while the kids were on Spring Break, we went to Tucson. I shot the Arizona State shoot and we took off a few days to hang out. We've gone to Tucson what seems like a bazillion times and all the kids do there is play in the rocks and get dirty. I never knew that there were neat things so close to the gun club. We visited the Desert Museum, which was pretty neat. They had pretty cool loaner strollers, a good collection of desert stuff, some interesting exhibits set up, and loads of scary snakes and the like. Here's the kids posing by the cool loaner stroller:

And the four of us having fun in the desert sun :)

On the way back from the museum, we passed Old Tucson Studios. We couldn't really see what was inside the "park" and I was wary of paying money to go see some "park" in the middle of the desert, especially since we visited the Flinstone Land back in November when we were in northern Az visiting the Polar Express. Flinstone Land was a creepy joke, but Emmy liked it. So I stopped some German tourists leaving Old Tucson Studios and they raved about the place, said they'd been there 3 times in their visit. So we gave it a shot. And... I was pleasantly surprised. It was kind of like a deserted amusement park. A bunch of western movies are filmed there- they call it "Hollywood in the desert"! They had a nice carousel, a little car ride thingy, and a bunch of old buildings and shows going on every half hour. We went to a show and had a good time. The park looked vacant, but there were a good 150 people at the show we went to. No lines, a cool train and the kids were happy. Here's a pic of the kids driving the little car.

TEXAS TRIP

A few weeks later, Shad and I loaded the kids into the motorhome and headed to San Antonio, Texas. The kids and I have been to the shoot a handful of times and have always had a good time, but Shad has never managed to make it. This year we did it! We had a great time. I ended up only shooting one full day, the rest of the trip we spent visiting the local attractions and hanging out together. The first day we went to the San Antonio Zoo, which is one of my favorite places I've ever visited. People are surprised when I rave about this zoo since I live close to the San Diego Zoo. But this zoo has history and it's not some over-commercialized hype that the San Diego Zoo is. The animals are happy, and they seem very up close. And there are no real hills and no doubledecker buses trying to run over the walkers.

Here's us riding the train through the BEAUTIFUL Breckenridge Park:

Callie in the Butterfly exhibit:

Emmy enjoying the butterflies:

Thomas was enthralled with everything there. We visited a petting zoo and for whatever reason (I'm nuts), goats freak me out (as do birds- see below). Thomas begged and begged to go pet the goats so I took him in there with Shad and the girls and I was nervous, but he had fun. Here's Thomas checking out the goats (safely):

Last year only Callie, Thomas and I visited the zoo as Emmy wanted to stay at the trap range and play with one of her friends. I had Thomas in one arm and took her into this big bird thing and some birds landed on me. It freaked me out. So this year I was hoping Shad could go with us to protect me from any attack birds. For whatever reason he wandered off with Thomas and the girls and I went into the bird thing again. This time though there were no attack birds. In fact, the birds weren't too interested in the food. The girls did find a few birds to feed though.
One of the most beautiful sites in San Antonio (or anywhere for that matter) is the Riverwalk. Last year Emmy fell in (to the knee), this year we visited twice and came out unscathed- woo hoo! We took a little boat tour like we do each year, Thomas loved the "agua", but 1/2 way through it he turned to me and said "Up", "All done, all done" and tried to get out of the boat. He's saying more and more each day, putting two words together now with "lets go" "all done" and "i go".

So the tort laws must be different in Texas. At the zoo they have the similar path where there stones broken up and water running between and at the Riverwalk they have the same thing, except it's a bit more involved since there is water on both sides of this path. It was fun to watch Shad get the stroller through this mess!

On another day we visited the Alamo and were there for the start of the Fiesta. Shad says the Fiesta started to honor the fallen heroes of the Alamo. I guess it gets pretty crazy for the Fiesta, though when we were there it was nice. Here's the fam in front of the Alamo:

Emmy standing in front of the monument for the Alamo:

We also visited the Witte Museum, where they have a great kids section. The girls had fun learning about Electricity and playing with the big waterworks section they have. We even saw a real mummy.....

On the way home we stopped at Kartchner Caverns and Tombstone. Kartchner Caverns was a very serious cave. We've only been to the Meramec caverns and Kartchner so I'm not a real cave dweller by any means, and Karchner was pretty and all but it was a HUGE deal. We were misted before we went in to keep the lint we let off to a minimum. Thomas' pacifier had to be connected to his body with some big rope thing... Very odd. But pretty too.

Tombstone was interesting. We went there first and arrived at around 10PM and there were a bunch of drunks wandering through the streets. It was like a college town with no college kids and no college. So we drove through the desert and camped near Kartchner caverns. The drive to the caverns was interesting, the Air Force base was doing some kind of drills and the planes they flew looked like UFOs, they hovered, moved sideways, then flew away quickly. Glad I wasn't one of those drunk cowboys wandering around Tombstone b/c I would swear that it was UFOs after us!

Here's my sad boy at Tombstone being a cowboy, doesn't he make the most pitiful sad face? Reminds me of his 2 month old picture!

Thomas and Emmy posing in the streets of Tombstone. Thomas was in love with all the horses! He says "Horse" sooo perfectly, it's very cute how he says it.
Callie didn't want to pose with Emmy and Thomas and was quite a grump b/c she was worn out. She found this raccoon cap and it made her giggle long enough for me to snap a picture:

The girls got new hats with whistles from the OK Corral (where some gunfight was) and they got nice cap guns w/ cute pink holsters. They had a ball with them. Here's Callie as we were leaving. Our cowgirl had a rough day, first the hot, muggy, serious cave and then the crazy old country town.

So we're home for a while now, thank God. We're getting ready for circus, getting back into the swing of things at home, getting ready for Grandma Bo's 99th birthday, and we might do a few short trips around here to the Observatory and the Wild Animal Park, but other than that, we're here for a while :)