The following is an extremely long blog entry written purely for my own purpose, as we are unlikely to be able to afford a holiday this year so I wanted to be able to remind myself that we did have a fabulous getaway when I am feeling deprived over the summer.

We had a family trip to Legoland last weekend, mainly for my eldest son's birthday but we also combined it the celebration of my mother and stepfather's anniversary, which is the same date. All in all it was a fabulous weekend although there were a few minor spats as seems to always be the case when we are all together for a quite a lengthy time.

We had Saturday and Sunday at Legoland, along with Saturday night at the Marriott, Heathrow, having booked a deal through Legoland.co.uk. We started out early Saturday morning, meeting my parents, brother and sister-in-law and 3 year old niece at my parents house at 7 am so we could drive up in convoy. It was a fairly smooth journey although, thanks to an accident and the closure of two lanes we did have a 30 min+ delay where we practically sat still on the motorway. When we eventually passed the accident, involving 3 cars which looked totally smashed up, one of which had the yellow sticker on it, meaning it was full of blood. This put a bit of a dampener on my mood as I could imagine a family, anticipating a nice day out and then, BANG, someone's dead. Of course, I had no way of knowing if that was the case but it made me thank my lucky stars when we all arrived safely at our destination at around 11am.

Legoland, Windsor how exciting!!! I quickly forgot my morbid ponderings as we entered the park. Even as you drive through the gates you notice the amazing lego sculptures of giant lego men hauling giant letters spelling out welcome on the way up to the car parks. Once organised and all through the ticket barriers, we were greeted by a spectacular view over Windsor, with Windsor castle in the distance. A quick peek down across the park to take in the sheer size of it all made us all thankful that we had two days to explore it and yet doubt that we would take it all in even then. We were advised, as my mother is a wheelchair user to work our way down and then get the hill train back as it is difficult to go the other way, having to continually push uphill. So down we went, my mother and stepfather taking the slopes while the rest of us took the steps, the children sliding down the slides at the edge of each tier of steps. We passed a variety of ingenious lego sculptures on our way to the first ride, which, it turned out our youngest was too short for so DH took eldest and my bro took lil niece on while I took youngest to have a look at one awe inspiring display of lego moles digging up lego bricks in a lego mine. Brilliant! Then my stepfather took lil one to play with lego in the imagination centre while I went back to meet the others. Next ride was the skyrider, which youngest was also not allowed on, as the next stop was Duploland we were not too bothered as we were sure he would get his turn then. The grandparents took him back to the imagination centre while the rest of us took the ride. The highlight of this ride was travelling over miniland and seeing the breathtaking sculptures of buildings, including many london landmarks that were perfect imitations, sadly we never did get to have a proper inspection of miniland as time did not permit, so that is one reason to return one day.

Next stop, Duploland, where it turns out youngest could ride on only two rides, and not very exciting rides at that, this became a bone of contention for us on the trip as there seemed to be no valid reason for the seemingly standard height limit of 0.9m on nearly every ride. Given that, last year, when he was only 1 he got to ride on loads of fast rides at Drayton Manor and he , unlike his tamer brother, follows both his parents in the thrillseeking stakes this was a bitter disappointment for us. Legoland do operate a policy where, on most rides, parents with children too small to ride do not have to queue twice for both to ride with the older children, one holds the baby for one ride, then they get to swap over. This is great for the parents, not so great for the young child who has to stand in the queue (and nearly all rides had at least 30 mins queue) and merely watch the rest of the family enjoy a ride he or she would desperately love to go on. Thank goodness we had my parents, Lil man enjoyed running around like a lunatic in the open spaces which were abundant around the park while one or both of us took our eldest on a ride.

After a picnic lunch, which thankfully I had prepared as the prices in Legoland for food are a bit , we strolled into adventureland, which is a lot like a beautifully landscaped zoo, only the animals are made of lego! There was a boating ride which youngest was allowed on, so despite massive queues, DH jumped at the opportunity to take him, while SIL and I took the other two on the dino dipper and dino safari.

Then it was time for the park's biggest rollercoaster, all children were too little for this one so DH, bro and I went to queue and left the rest of the party watching the huge carp in the lake. After 30 mins queueing we made it to the point where we could see just how long the queue was and realised it would be at least another 30 mins. As it was then past 5 pm we decidied to leave it for then and to go back 1st thing the following morning. We rejoined our party who were sitting down by the lake and made our way to Legocity.A funky place with lots of lego characters, the boys had money to spend so we had a look in the Brick Bros shop, where eldest bought himself the lego city police lorry, police sea plane and ambulance and lil one chose a duplo digger. The lego was much cheaper here than other shops so their money went a lot further. My niece bagged herself a pink princess of legoland T shirt and pink box of lego bricks, she is such a girly girl!

Then it was time for the hill train and back to the cars to make our way to our hotel. What a fab hotel! After a quick wash and change we all met downstairs at 8pm to have dinner in the American Restaurant. It was a buffet dinner at £24 per adult . Still, it was a special occasion and it's not often we all get together so it was worth it. Plus, when you consider what food was available, it would have all cost far more a la carte at even a cheap restaurant and we certainly all ate our money's worth! There were a variety of salads, fresh fruit, appetisers such as smoked salmon (mmmm, my favourite!), salami, olives, etc., freshly made soup and bread, main course included pork and apple sauce, chicken in tarragon and asparagus sauce, salmon in citrus sauce with braised cabbage (perfectly cooked mmmm!), carrots and mange tout, new potatoes with garlic and olive oil dressing, roast potatoes etc. Having had soup and 3 plates of appetisers and salads, I had the tiniest portion of chicken with just a taste of all the veg because I wanted to leave some room for the spectacular desserts. There were delightful choux pasry swans filled with vanilla cream, fruit salad, belgian chocolate mousse, forest fruit mousse, lemon syllabub and miniature fruit tartes (like tarts only posher!). I had a chocolate mousse, lemon syllabub and a fruit tarte, I wanted to try them all but was too full to bursting, also I had to leave out the cheese and biscuits sadly as there was a huge yummy looking selection. It was After 10 when we got around to getting the bill, which was pretty hefty , but worth every penny.

So with two extremely tired young men, it was back to our room for a good nights sleep. Breakfast was another cornucopia of delights (as you can tell, I love my food, and for me, the best part of staying a hotel is the breakfast, I love it!!). The breakfast buffet consisted of fresh fruit, yoghurt, a variety of fruit juices, tea and coffee, croissants, danish pastries, muffins, belgian waffles with warm chocolate sauce, stewed autumn fruits or maple syrup; cheeses, cold meats, the usual hot food with a chef who cooked your eggs to your order, a choice of bread to cut yourself and one of those funky rolling toasters, a huge selection of jams and spreads and of course a wide variety of cereals. We all acheived our aim of filling ourselves up so that we would not need to buy much of a lunch at legoland!

So, back to Legoland! . It was busy there even before the park had properly opened at 10am! As the 3 of us rollercoaster fans wanted to ride the Jungle coaster before the queue built up, we headed down to adventureland while the rest of the party headed for viking land. We were among the first in the queue and had to wait only 10 minutes this time. Well, thank goodness! If I had waited over an hour, I would have wanted that hour of my life back! What a huge disappointmentThere was only one big drop and even then, just as you got to the point where your stomach starts to lift up into your throat, it's over, then you're up again for series of s shaped bends, which, yes, maybe high up from the ground but it was a slow trundle through them and the track was not even banked slightly, then, two very short dips later and it's over! I've been on more exciting children's rides!

After meeting up with the rest of the family, I took the birthday boy on the Dragon's Apprentice, as he had already been on The Dragon with his Gramps; I found this mini rollercoaster to be a lot more fun than the Jungle Coaster and judging by the shrieks of delight from my niece behind us, she certainly enjoyed it as well. The we all went to Lego city, where there were a few rides that were suitable for the lil one such as the ferris wheel, and carousel. After a ride on a carousel horse, lil one decided he wanted to go on the 'spinny thing', rather like a tea cup ride, as there was only one of these on the carousel, we had to share with a couple of older children who span the thing as fast as was possible; leaving me dizzy but my little speed freak saying 'I loved that spinning!' Then we had a more sedate ride on the orient express, passing lots of impressive lego animals.

At around 2.30pm we finally became peckish and stopped at one of the many barbecue stands dotted around the park for a barbecued hot dog, which we ate by the side side of the lake. Next we watched a show called the Revenge of the Aztec Queen, which was a very entertaining 15 minute action drama involving lots of falling off a high tower into water, other acrobatics and a jet ski. Then we had a go on real diggers, for which purposes we decided our youngest was 3, as that was the age limit. Next stop was the fire academy, where you race against 3 other teams to put out a fire and return your fire engine to the starting line. DH, eldest and I won that one, just beating a team of teenagers!!. How silly we must have looked, pumping the pistons as fast as we could. We came out to find that my SIL had taken lil one on the adjacent balloon ride afetr discovering that there was no height limit for accompanied children despite the fact that riders were not secured in the gondolas and they went fairly high up, a bit bemusing considering the height limit on the ground level rides with lap belts.

It was then back to Viking land for a ride on the Viking River Splash, where we got soaked! Then we reluctantly made our way back up to the beginning, pausing to take in the spectacular views over the park and beyond. A quick look in the shop and a few photo's of the children in a lego Thomas the Tank Engine and it was time to leave. The end of a fantastic family weekend.

If there is anybody still reading at this point I would recommend Legoland for a family getaway but would suggest making it a two day trip as we did, there is far too much for one day and the two day packages through their website are very reasonable. I would also suggest waiting until all children are over 5 and to go at off peak season to avoid long queues. Thanks for reading to this point, hope it wasn't too boring!