This post has been a long time coming: I had planned to put it together all the way back in February, shortly after our family trip to Legoland, but then things got very interesting very quickly.

Before we dig into what we’ve been doing for the last few months, we have a set of photos from the trip, which was a relatively spur-of-the-moment idea that sprang from Julie’s head. I had a day off for Presidents’ Day; Julie’s birthday fell on the same weekend; and the kids all had winter break / ski week the next week. As a result, Julie felt it was practically an imperative that we the take the kids somewhere. Additionally, I’ve long felt like we missed out on taking Julia and Joe to Legoland when they were in their prime Lego-building, Ninjago-watching years. That’s how the five of us ended up piled into the minivan for a road trip Friday evening.

We left after I got home from work (much later than Julie had hoped for, which is important for reasons that will become clear shortly). We planned to have Valentine’s Day dinner at Harris Ranch before the long drive down to Legoland in Carlsbad, which is about half an hour north of San Diego, but things got off to a bit of a rocky start when we realized that a great many other people had also decided to get out of town for the long weekend. It took us around two hours just to get down U.S. 101 to Gilroy, and the situation was complicated further by the fact that Joe was exceptionally well hydrated that day. We finally made it to the interstate, but were way behind schedule: we didn’t arrive at Harris Ranch in Coalinga until after 8:00.

Here, once again, it might have been prudent to listen to Julie’s judgement regarding our schedule: she thought it was late enough that we would be best served by grabbing something at a drive-through and getting on our way, but I thought we wouldn’t take too much of a hit by stopping to kick off the trip with a nice dinner and celebrate Valentine’s Day. Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but it probably should have been clear already that we were in trouble. We didn’t get back on the road until around 9:30.

The rest of the drive was reasonably uneventful, other than the slowly rising tide of exhaustion that gradually silenced the car. One by one, the kids fell asleep, and eventually even Julie grew quiet, though I’m not sure she ever actually closed her eyes. We finally arrived at the Legoland hotel sometime around 2:30 in the morning, bleary-eyed and barely functioning. We dragged our luggage up to our room and passed out around 3:00, any hope of getting an early start at the park the next morning long gone.

The hotel itself was utterly charming, at least if you’re into Lego. The hallways and rooms were decked out with Lego-themed decor, and there was a daily scavenger hunt for clues that revealed the combination to a treasure chest in the room that was stocked each morning with small Lego kits for the kids. Julie and William especially liked the elevators, which were lit by flashing colored lights and played disco music whenever the cars were in motion.

Legoland itself lived up to expectations, as well. It’s no Disneyland, or even Great America, at least in terms of thrills for adults and older kids, but there were more than enough age-appropriate activities and rides for William. His favorite ride was Lego Ninjago the Ride, which takes you through a series of scenes from the Ninjago TV show, chucking virtual throwing stars at bad guys. There were other, more hands-on activities, as well: William spent a good forty-five minutes building boats out of Lego and sending them down a flume filled with obstacles. The biggest challenge there was making sure that no one else grabbed and disassembled your boat before it reached the bottom.

Even Joe found something to love: he rode the Aquazone Wave Racers—which had a short line because, seeing as it was February, it was pretty chilly in the evening—long after Julie and Julia had retired to the hotel room for the night.

The plan had been to spend one day at the park and then head to the San Diego Zoo Sunday morning, but since we had a late start on Saturday and our passes were good all weekend, we decided to ride a few more rides in the morning and depart a bit later. For once, things went more or less according to plan, and we got to the zoo in the early afternoon after stopping off for a quick lunch at McDonald’s.

Unfortunately, we’d miscalculated on one critical point: we didn’t check the zoo’s hours before planning our day. As it turns out, the San Diego Zoo closes at 5:00 in Februrary, which left us just a few hours to see what we could. We still saw quite a few exhibits, thanks to a very well-executed bus tour, but we really only scratched the surface of what the zoo has to offer.

That said, it might have been for the best, because William was starting to complain that he was tired and wanted to lie down; worse, his nose was starting to run. Unbeknownst to us, these were the first signs of a nasty bug that would eventually get the whole family, including Julia, who never gets sick. But, at the time, we thought that the exertions of the weekend, combined with repeatedly riding the water ride with Joe repeatedly the previous, chilly evening, might have been too much for him.

So, after a detour through the zoo gift shop—William came home with a stuffed narwhal based solely on his affection for the Ben Clanton book series—we made our way to our hotel for the evening. We were all pretty worn out, and nobody was in the mood to put too much work into dinner, so we used Yelp to see if we could find something nearby that would be quick and easy. This led to a truly lucky break: just down the block from the hotel was an unassuming taqueria, La Playa Taco Shop, that was just what we needed: the food was fantastic, and the atmosphere was such that a family of bedraggled tourists wasn’t going to ruin the experience for other patrons. If you’re ever in the Pacific Beach neighborhood in San Diego, Julie strongly recommends the Shrimp a la Diabla.

As tired as we were, the night wasn’t quite through with us yet. Over the course of the evening, I took a hike to the nearest drug store to get some cold medicine for William, who was growing more sniffly by the hour; we tried and largely failed to get Joe into the pool—he really wanted to swim, but was feeling a little self-conscious because he was 13 and there were some other young adults in the pool; and William somehow managed to lose his second tooth.¹

Morning came quickly. We took the boys down to a restaurant on the beach for breakfast; having spent all of the previous two days with the family, Julia was more than ready for some alone time in the hotel room. After wandering around near the water line for a bit, we piled back into the car to begin the trip northward.

We started off by taking the scenic route along the coast from San Diego to La Jolla, where, had things gone differently with my then-employer in 1998, we might be living today. We spent some time driving around town, failing to locate some landmarks I had dredged up from twenty-year-old memories of my earlier visit. Eventually, we ended up at La Jolla Shores, a beautiful, mile-long stretch of beach, giving Joe and William the opportunity to stretch their legs and play in the surf for a couple hours before the long drive up the interstate (Julia, true to form, sat in a chair reading a book).

The rest of the trip was blissfully uneventful. We took a slight detour through Anaheim so we could have a quick dinner at Portillo’s, which still doesn’t have a location in Northern California. And we took a slightly longer side trip into Los Angeles in an effort to fulfill Julia’s desire to see the Hollywood sign, but we were too late: the lights were already off for the evening by the time we got there.

After that, it was more or less a straight shot home, where we arrived at the relatively sane hour of midnight.

There’s a lot more to be said about what we did—and, just as importantly, what we didn’t do over the intervening months—but I’ve gone on long enough and these pictures aren’t getting any fresher, so that will have to wait for another time.

Gallery: Legoland