Over the past two years, the boys have had a cork board on the wall for their “pins”. The pin board had 100 spaces on it. They would earn a pin to put on the board for doing something positive. Whenever they were helpful, respectful, or thoughtful without being told, they could get pins. I sometimes bribed them to do hard things or learn new things with pins. Pins could never be taken away as punishment; they were only for positive reinforcement.

As their spaces filled in, they could cash in pins for prizes. Maybe they wanted to buy a new video game or a new toy. If they saved up 10 pins, it was only worth a few dollars. 50 pins could get something really good. I told them if they both made it to 100 pins, they would win a family vacation.

Initially they cashed in the pins a lot. The more they spent, the harder it was to watch them get pulled out. Eventually, they started just letting them build up. Finally, they both had reached the 100 pin mark!

When they put in their 100th pin, they got a little trophy with their name and “100 pins” on it.

We all decided that we would be going to LEGOLAND California! We would even stay in the fancy LEGOLAND Hotel! We decided to go over Veteran’s Day weekend. We did not want to battle crowds, so we left on a Thursday.

On the 8th, the school had a Thanksgiving Day feast for families. Bill and I went and had a pretty amazing turkey lunch with the boys.

As soon as lunch was over, we checked the boys out early and hit the road. By 6PM, we had arrived!

The LEGOLAND Castle hotel was next door. Maybe next time we go, we will stay there.

The hotel lobby was pretty exciting.

I could have just left Brendan in this pit of Lego for the rest of the evening!

Cool Lego sculptures were everywhere!

The next morning, the boys were up at the crack of dawn. Going down to the lobby at 6:15am let us take some photos with nobody else around.

We headed to the breakfast buffet to kill time until the park opened.

How will Brendan kill time?

The park entrance was right outside the window!

Hotel guests get a wristband that lets them get in an hour early!

Trevor went on all the rides. Brendan was not ready to do these coasters yet. (Bill and Trevor are in the fourth seat)

Both boys did the helicopter ride

They drove all around Lego City

They were setting up for Christmas with a HUGE tree made of Lego!

There was a new submarine ride. You could look under the water and see Lego sea creatures mixed with real fish.

Brendan was really excited because he has the small version of this Lego set at home after he saw this same spider at Brookfield Zoo.

Brendan and Bill were going to slide down together.

Brendan was too close to the edge and slid down first on his own. He was a little scared to go alone, it was fast!

Technic version of spinning tea-cup ride

Brendan-Mommy selfie

Back in our hotel room, we had some papers with a scavenger hunt on it. You had to walk through the hotel and find the answers to mystery questions to get a code that would unlock the safe in the room.

We found our code, time to unlock!

What was actually in the safe was a little lego set! They would put a new one in each day that you stayed.

Saturday, we used our free “Waves of Honor” SeaWorld passes to spend the day at SeaWorld. We didn’t take the camera because it was all pretty much the same as last time. We had to ride Brendan’s favorite virtual arctic helicopter ride three times. We visited the Beluga whales. They were playing with Trevor at the window.

Trevor rode the grown-up sized roller coaster called the Manta. He is in the front seat in the video.

(Under the roller coaster, we fed real manta rays)

Sunday, we headed toward home. We stopped to visit the Palm Springs Air Museum.

Bill took the boys on a tour of the inside of a B-17

We could not drive by without stopping at the General Patton Memorial Museum! They had just opened a brand new expansion to their exhibit building and this new tank pavilion.

They added a new tank that you can climb inside. (The turret top is also in the building on a separate display)

It was a really exciting trip to celebrate the boys’ accomplishments. Now I have to come up with a new idea for the next set of pins.