Flattered by Thoughtfulness

I forgot to mention something on the blog yesterday. We bought our tickets to Legoland online, several days ahead of time. The discounts are bigger and bigger the further in advance that you purchase. When we arrived at the park, we picked up our tickets from a young man that was giggling. I could tell he wasn't laughing AT us, so I got up the guts to say "share the funny story with us". He smiled and said "I don't get to hear the American accent in person very often and it just makes me happy, I'd love to switch accents with you". I thought that was fascinating, back to the "grass is greener" thing again. I felt flattered too, which was interesting.

The family went to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park yesterday. Their experience was similar to mine, it's a cool little (brand  new) town and the actual park is vast and relatively empty. Feels cool to stand there and think about the Olympics.

Last night we went to a place called Guildford Spectrum. It's a huge building with 4 floors (I think, or it might be 3). It has bowling, gymnastics, wave pool with slides, lane pool, professional ice rink, soft play area, many climbing walls, karate, coffee shops, outdoor track and field, and it's all surrounded by a huge UK park. Remember the show "robot wars", where they build huge robots from old car parks and then battle? That show will be filming there on Fathers Day and the robot was already there to look at, very cool.

We had time to go bowling and ice skating. The bowling was great and the ice skating was even better. After skating for about 90 minutes, they call a timeout, clear the ice, and professional ice dancers give a show, nice touch. We got back on the ice and sure we fell a few times, but ice skating always reminds me "it's not about how you fall, it's about how you get back up".

On the walk home my older daughter told me that she's been working hard to create a video game for me for Fathers Day. She's been a little stuck on some of the Artificial Intelligence, but didn't want to ruin the surprise of the game for me. Such an amazing feeling to have her think of me and work so hard. We coded together at home and enjoyed every second of it. We got closer to what she was imagining, but failed to get all the way there. We'll get back up tomorrow and make it happen.