Disneyland, Day Three, not in Disneyland

Edit: This post was written at a later date and moved to this date to keep it chronologically accurate.  

We decided to take Thursday off.  I don't have many pictures of Thursday.  Roy and I spent a couple of hours in the morning listening to the time share schpill. I was not too happy about it but Roy had some questions he wanted answered...  He felt so bad about making me sit for over 2 hours so he could ask his questions that he gave me the $100 gift card we earned they gave us.

The kids stayed with grandma and grandpa during this time.  They had a really good time playing shuffle board, going on a walk and swimming in the pool.  A got a little sad after a while in the pool.  She missed her mommy!  Aww....

In the afternoon, we decided to walk over to the Downtown Disney district.  Everything is very different from when I went to Disneyland as a kid.  There's a whole new park (California Adventure), 2 new hotels and an entire shopping district owned by Disney.  It was pretty fun.  I like window shopping so I had fun.  The kids did okay but they got a little bored after a while.

You can barely see the parrot in the picture with D.  There was a restaurant there called the Rainforest Cafe with a live parrot demonstration out front.

Much easier to see the parrot with K.  I think A was asleep in the stroller by this point.

The picture above shows K's attitude.  I don't know if it was because things were so overwhelming or busy or what but she was frequently grumpy.  The word "NO" came out of her mouth quite a bit which is a little strange considering we were in Disneyland!

Fortunately she was usually pretty easy to talk out of her slump.  K is a smart girl and will usually make a good choice if presented with the right options.  (ie. Stay here and be grumpy by yourself or smile and go with us to get ice cream.)

This fountain was right by where we enter the shopping area.  It was pretty fun to watch because the water did different things -- sometimes it was high, sometimes it pulsed, sometimes it was low, sometimes it was off, etc.
We stopped at a restaurant called Fire And Ice for dinner.  It was one of those with a large grill in the middle of the room.  You filled a dish with food from the buffet and took it to the grill to be cooked.  It seemed like a fun place to eat.  I won't go so far as to call it a disaster but it wasn't too good.  I didn't really like my food much at all.  A refused to eat anything.  K ate a few bites of a hot dog before hiding under the table. And D ate some food the proclaimed he felt sick and was threatening to throw up.  Throw in a close call with the bathroom and a cranky 2 year old throwing food it you would have our dinner.
One other little fun event from that evening was K falling down the up escalator.  Yeah.  She got on without anyone with her and when I called, "K! Wait!"  She turned around, lost her balance and went down.  I rushed right over to her and got her up pretty quick but not before she'd gone down a few stairs which was weird because she was on an escalator so the stairs kept moving.  Poor girl got some serious leg bruises from that!
Only one more day of Disneyland left!

Disneyland, Day Two

Edit: This post was written at a later date and moved to this date to keep it chronologically accurate.  

Day 2 didn't start quite as early.  Thank goodness, we all needed to sleep!  It did start in Fantasyland again though.  The girls wanted to ride a few of their favorite rides so I took them on Dumbo, the Teacups and the Carousel again.  Grandma was with us for Dumbo but then she bailed out to go ride Thunder Mountain Railroad with the guys.  That was D's favorite ride!  He rode it at least once everyday but more if we'd let him.  He also rode the Disneyland train and the little Casey Junior train in Fantasyland, oh, and the Main Street Trolly.

"Look mom.  Dumbo holds the magic feather with his nose, like this!"

 Ugh.  Spinning teacups, not my favorite but the girls LOVED them!

More Carousel shots

 After leaving Fantasyland we felt it was time to head to Tomorrowland since we hadn't made it over there the day before.  We drove on Autopia.  I rode with A.  She drove part of the time.  That was jolting.  We also rode the Monorail which completed D's train ride collection.  He rode every train in Disneyland.

At that point every line in Disneyland was pretty long and we wanted to head to California Adventure to check it out.  It was pretty fun but there was A LOT of construction.  D asked if we could come back in the Summer when the construction is supposed to be finished.  Um, no.

One of the first rides we rode was the Jumping Jellyfish ride.  When we went to Oaks Park during the summer, A's favorite ride had been the Frog Hopper which is very similar to this jellyfish ride.  Unfortunately, she was too short to ride on the Jellyfish.  She was definitely NOT pleased.  Those are actual tears flowing out of her eyes!

 

 

One of our favorite rides was the Woody and Buzz shooting gallery.  The line was probably 45-60 minutes but it was so fun!  You wear these flattering 3D glasses and ride in little carts.  Each seat in the cart has a blaster that you can aim and pull the string to shoot at targets in the ride.  You can totally see the ammo leaving your gun and hitting the targets.  Sometimes you could hit a target and part of it would explode out of the screen at you.  It was so real it made me jump!  D and I rode together.  We laughed and shot.  It kept our score and ranks us at the end.  Roy thought he was pretty cool because he had the highest score in our group.  Then we saw the all time high scores and he didn't feel quite so cool.

Don't worry, she's not drunk, just really tired.

We stayed to watch the watershow in California Adventure.  Unfortunately, we were in behind the show so we didn't get to see the really cool projections on the water but the show was still pretty amazing anyway.  On our way out of the park we ran into Mater and Lightening McQueen.

It was another fun and exhausting day!

Disneyland, Day One

Edit: This post was written at a later date and moved to this date to keep it chronologically accurate. 

Waiting in line.  We got to Disneyland nice and early Tuesday morning for our Magic Morning Admission.  This meant we got to go in the park an hour before "opening".  You know, us and a thousand of our closest friends.  The kids were pretty excited, you just can't tell in this photo.

First thing in the park was Mickey Mouse!  So EXCITING!  Until K asked to see the Mickey Mouse that wasn't a human in a costume.  She wasn't fooled.  It didn't help that she hadn't had enough sleep the night before so she was a little cranky.  

The castle was smaller than I remember.  K was pretty excited to go through the castle though. 

Our first ride of the day was the Carousel.  That's right, we drove 1,000 miles to ride a Carousel.  The girls were super excited.  In fact we rode it a couple of times over the three days we spent at the parks.  

After the Carousel, we stood in line for 45 minutes to ride Dumbo.  Both girls really loved the Dumbo ride.  D enjoyed it too but Fantasyland held more fascination for the girls than him.

I think it is safe to say that A's favorite was the teacups.  She loved them. She laughed like a little loon and kept telling Grandpa to spin "faster!"

D got to ride in the very front of the boat on the Storybook tour.  It was really fun being in Disneyland and sharing rides that I recall as a child with my kids.  That is the real Disney magic!

We did eventually make it out of Fantasyland and over to Frontierland where D found his favorite ride of all time: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Thanks to fastpasses he was able to ride probably 4-5 times.  We did Splash Mountian, Haunted Mansion and other rides in Frontierland, New Orleans Square and AdventureLand.  We saw Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Eeyore over there too.  

Late in the afternoon we headed to ToonTown.  It was a lot of fun.  A especially enjoyed Minnie's house.  She didn't want to leave!

K is a strong girl...  But not quite strong enough it seems!

Despite just being humans in costumes, the kids liked seeing some of their favorite Disney friends.  We stayed at the park until nearly 8 p.m.  Needless to say the kids went to sleep without any coaxing!

On the road to Disneyland

Edit: This post was written at a later date and moved to this date to keep it chronologically accurate.

I mentioned in my last post that we went to Disneyland.  We left home Sunday afternoon and drove 600 miles to Sacrament CA.  The kids are amazing travelers!  We didn't have a DVD player so they just read books, took naps, looked out the window -- you know, the things WE used to do when going on long car trips.  We only had one incident of car sickness.  With two kids prone to puke that isn't too bad considering...  Plus we got to meet a really nice police officer who pulled up behind us while we were on the side of the freeway.  He gave the kids stickers and chatted up Roy.  D (the guilty party) was so funny when the police truck stopped behind us.  "Oh no!  I'm going to be arrested!"  Er, uh, no.  They don't generally arrest kids for throwing up in their parent's cars.  Good thing they don't arrest parents who are angry at kids for throwing up in their cars!
Anyway, we stayed in a lovely Best Western just south of Sacramento.  The kids were bummed we didn't go swimming in the pool but we wanted to get on the road so we could swim at the condo!
Monday morning we enjoyed our complimentary continental breakfast before jumping back on the road to Anaheim.  Man, California is a LONG state!
We finally made it through LA (fun.) and to our condo.  Grandpa and Grandma B were there to greet us.  We were all glad to get out of the car.  Of course, the kids were wired and Roy and I were zapped.  We wanted to cook our own food and take lunches to the park the next day so Grandma and I went out shopping while Grandpa, Roy and the kids went swimming.  I LOVE that the kids swam in an outdoor pool in February!  Hooray for Southern California sunshine!
We decided to use our early morning entrance the next morning so we did our best to hustle the kids to bed.  This worked about as well as you would expect.  "Calm DOWN and go to SLEEP!  We are going to Disneyland tomorrow.  Don't you want to see Mickey?  Well, then, GO TO SLEEP."
Eventually our overwhelming logic convinced them to drift off with D clinging to the edge of the mattress because he had to share his bed with a girl!  And A slept between Roy and I in the king size bed.  Only for one night.  Then she was banished.  Poor girl.
I don't have any pictures of all this.  I didn't even think about getting my camera out until we were actually at Disneyland.  Oh well.

Funny Kid Stuff

Apparently A has an imaginary friend.  She talks about Wally all the time.  I don't know where Wally came from, she's never seen the Disney movie Wall-E.  It started with her talking to Wally on the phone.  The other day I was getting her dressed and she told me Wally was hiding in her room.  He's not around a lot but enough that I guess he's her new friend.

K asked me the other day when she was going to be 39.  I told her in 35 years.  She spent the next 5 minutes of the car ride lamenting the fact that she wasn't 39 or 49.  No reason, just because she likes the way it sounds.

D and I were talking about death the other day.  I asked him if we needed to be afraid of dying.  His response, "Uhhhh, not until we're 35."  Fail.

The sweetest one in the house is A.  Her new favorite term of endearment for everyone?  Poopyhead.

Enough already!

We are going on three weeks of sickness over here.  THREE WEEKS PEOPLE.  My sanity (what little of it I actually possessed) is shot.  A's been to the doctor twice because I got concerned about strep or pneumonia.  She had a sore throat and fever for nearly two and a half weeks.  It seemed to get better then worse again.  She is fine now except for a cough.  This cough mostly only comes at night.  She has developed this fun habit of coughing after she falls asleep until she throws up.  Every night.  It doesn't matter what measures we take to avoid this (Vick's rub, humidifier, propping her up with pillows, setting her up in a chair) she is a guaranteed spew.  Of course, once she does this she is fine.  Sleeps through the night with barely a cough.  I know things could be worse but I'm getting awfully sick of cleaning up the mess every night!
K lost her voice for a while in there.  She didn't let a pesky little thing like that stop her though.  No way, not K.  She just powered on through, talking all the while.  She did find some scissors while I was ignoring her busy earlier this week.   I discovered the pile of hair carefully hid under the train table in the toy room.  It was a good opportunity to talk about truth vs lie because she insisted that D did it.  Then later when we were cleaning the toys up she told me how she did it.  The thing about K is, she doesn't actually lie.  I think she honestly believes the story she is telling at the time.
D finished his report this week.  We handed it in on Thursday. Now we need to get through the 5 minute oral presentation on Friday this week.  We need to figure out what props he's going to make and get them made.  I'm thinking of posting his report on here.  I'm pretty proud of him!
Did I mention we've been sick for three weeks?  Three weeks of fevers, sore throats, coughs, phlem and fun!  Okay, maybe not the fun part.  But now it is mine turn I guess. Apparently you can only hang around germ balls for so long before you get sick too.  I think it is time for a vacation.  Or a summer.  I'd take either one.

Innocent looking germ hosts

Worth 1,000 Words

The Magic School Bus

K and I met D's class for a play today.  I got a sitter for A (harder than anticipated!) so it was just K and I.  D rode on the school bus since it was a field trip with parents invited.  I think this is the kids first play.  They didn't quite know what to expect.

It was a pretty short play.  K sat on my lap.  Near the end she was ready to go.  She even turned sideways on my lap and curled up in it.  Turns out she was getting a fever and didn't feel too well.  

The play was pretty good.  Rather a political message....  One of the teachers and I were chatting after it was over.  She joked that she was half expecting Al Gore to walk out on stage and give a speech when the curtain fell!  Still, a good message -- reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink!

It was fun.  I'm glad I had the chance to be there for their first play and spend that time with my kids.