In the winter months, every Monday at Legoland is a ‘home school’ day. They discount the admission price from $63 per person to $17 per person in addition to having some extra education classes. Max wasn’t interested in the robotics class that they offered on the day we went, but we all benefited from the reduced admission.

I don’t like water rides. Toby and I rock-paper-scissor’d for the ‘honor’ of riding with Lucy on the water cannon ride. I’m not sure how she did it, but I think Toby cheated. I wasn’t getting too wet until some random grandpa on the outside shot a water cannon right at my ear.

Ugh. Another water ride. But my daughter is soooo happy…

The firefighter show might be Toby’s favorite attraction at Legoland. She and the kids love the stunts and the music (‘Put the wet stuff on the hot stuff’). I also like this show as it provided me with a 25 minute nap on a grassy knoll.

After Legoland closed for the day, we had dinner at Pizza Port in Carlsbad. We had eaten here on our last trip to Carlsbad a couple of years ago. As we sat down, one of the other diners looked familiar. It really looked like a friend of my cousin Tim’s, a guy that I had waterskii’d with a number of times during my high school years. I was not sure, but after I explained to Toby that we used to call him ‘Andre The Giant’ and she replied that he looked rather tall even when sitting, I exited my comfort zone, approached his table and asked if he was Jeff Steffen. He said that he was and had a very blank look on his face. I told him who I was and he immediately recognized the name and remembered me and the ski trips. On reflection (and later web research) I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him at Pizza Port, as Chad Theule had written (many years ago) about a Monday night tradition of Dads and kids at Pizza Port with Jeff as most consistent attendee. For Chad, the tradition was already 8 years old when the article was written in 2005! It is good that the tradition continues even if Chad’s blogging has fallen by the wayside.