Hooray for friends!

This time the adventure came to us, with the arrival of our good friends from Kalamazoo a few weeks ago. We've known them since their son, now eleven, was a baby and before their daughter was born. We were part of each other's day-to-day lives for several years and we have missed them dearly. So we were delighted when Uncle Sam provided them a nice tax refund and they bought tickets to Germany.

We played hours and hours of games, we laughed until we cried, we walked all over until the kids started complaining (and then a little further), we ate dozens of sandwiches and generally enjoyed every moment of our week together. We showed them our little town, took them into our nearby city on the train, toured the local castle (complete with dungeon) and walked along the Baltic seashore.

Though the whole time was great, I think all six of us would agree that the highlight was our outing to the original Legoland amusement park in Denmark, where the Lego bricks originated. We spent our first hour in the park just looking at the Lego Miniland, which had amazingly accurate and realistic replicas of European cities, castles and landmarks throughout the world. There were even rivers with working locks and dams and real landscaping with miniature plants and trees. Among the American replicas were a Hollywood film set, the Kennedy Space Center, the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore! And of course all the replicas of famous landmarks had tiny replicas of tourists too. We spent the rest of the day walking around the themed areas of the park- Pirateland, Indiana Jones-style Adventure Land, Western Legoredo town and Knights' Kingdom. We rode rides, watched a 4-D movie, toured the aquarium and admired more Lego creations at every turn. The day was capped off with a visit to the Lego Shop where the kids picked out some cool souvenirs.

As it always does when you are having fun, time flew by and it was time for them to head home again. I had plenty of laundry and cleaning to do after they were gone but the house seemed way too quiet and lonely!