Southern California Trip

Our annual trip to visit my snow-bird parents started out kind of rough this year.  Hubby was in town but working, so we couldn't leave until he got home.  And the snowstorm that started just got worse and worse, until when we finally left at about 7:30 pm on the 16th of February it was whipping up to be a blizzard.
It's a 12 hour drive, or so, and we lost nearly two hours the first night by slowing down because we COULDN'T SEE A DARNED THING on the road.  It was pretty harrowing, one of the scariest driving experiences I've had.
We had arranged to go the same time as my brother's family this year.  They left an hour ahead of us, and ran just ahead of the storm, where we were right in the middle of it.  They made it to Vegas for the night.  We made it to Cedar City (175 miles behind them) the same time they did (1:30 am.).
The next day Hubby was beat from the stress of driving the night before, so I drove.  I was so relieved to not be driving into a blinding snowstorm, I didn't pay attention to the car and I RAN OUT OF GAS about 20 miles north of Vegas.  It took AAA about an hour to get to us.
So my brother's family left an hour before us, but got to the beach about four hours ahead of us, long enough to play on the beach for the afternoon before we even got there.  Dagnabbit!


We went to Disneyland on Friday, and had one of the best times we've ever had.  My brother's youngest daughter and Thing 2 braved each other into going on the Tower of Terror.  Thing 2 talked her cousin into the California Screamer roller coaster and Thunder Mountain.  Thing 1 is more tentative about the Tower of Terror and the Screamer, and she sat back with my brother's 2nd oldest who is also not as into the rides.  So it worked out for everyone!


All in all it was a great day, until we got rained out.  Thing 1 was drenched from the bottom of her raincoat to her socks, and so we bugged out around 9:00 pm.  My brother and his die-hard family stayed until nearly 11:30 or so.


The next day we spent at the beach, with the little girls boogie boarding and burying each other in the sand.  My brother's older daughters boogie boarded and body surfed, while the parents lined up their beach chairs and read their books.
There was also some shopping going on, who can bypass the Carlsbad Outlet mall?


My brother's family had to get back, so they left Monday morning.  We moved out of the condo we had rented and into the spare room of my parent's condo for the rest of our trip.  We mostly spent our days on the beach after the left, but did take the girls to Legoland, and had a great time there.

It was a wonderful trip!  AND one of the bonuses was we drove back Friday to avoid a storm, and we did!  And we didn't run out of gas, either!
And since it's a pain to manipulate them into the appropriate place in the story, the photos are all just dumped at the end.

My brother's oldest, 3rd, and 2nd daughters...

 

My sister-in-law (who I rarely get pictures of because she's camera shy) and Thing 2.

 In California Adventure Thing 2 was picked to participate with the Super Dudes.  She exhibited great strength by lifting this huge weight over her head using the controversial "thumbs behind" grip.

Here you see the backs of Hubby, Thing 1's head, then Nieces 1 and 2, my brother, his wife, and Niece 4 all heading to the exit in the rain.

Back at the beach the "adults" and my oldest niece didn't get in the water as much, everyone had a book to read while we monitored the younger kids.

Thing 1 and my youngest niece did a lot of boogie boarding.

At one point my two and my brother's youngest were all out boogie boarding.

 My brother's middle daughters were very good sports and helped bury my two and their younger sister.  Left to right they are my brother's youngest, 2nd oldest, and 3rd oldest, Thing 1, and Thing 2's head attached to the sand... octopus or whatever it is.

At Legoland Hubby and Thing 1 spent some quality time at the building table in Legoland.  Thing 2 and I joined them after we were done playing video games in the other room.

 We waited in line for this ride for the LONGEST time... even though the park wasn't that crowded and the line wasn't that long... it was just SO SLOW.  Legoland hasn't quite figured out the quick line system like Disneyland has.

Back at the beach Hubby and Thing 2 did some boogie boarding.

 Mostly when Hubby or I go out with the girls, we stand in the water and then rocket them ahead of the wave so they have a good ride.

 Thing 2 had had enough of the beach, she wanted to spend the last day at the pool.

Grandma and I had to go out to see the sandcastle that Hubby and Thing 1 had built before the sun set and the water washed it away.

Yet another marvelous trip, made even more marvelous by playing with the cousins for a couple of days!

Dolphin, not Swan

We're back! And we had a great time!

Hubby was there for the Agile 2010 conference, not that it matters for my part of the story, but the conference went well for him.

First of all, turns out we were at the Disney Dolphin, not the Swan. While we're talking about this let me state that The Dolphin is not really a dolphin. It has spikes and scales and is rather un-dolphin like. Hubby thought it's more like a sturgeon.


I was told it is a Dolphin Fish, as opposed to a Dolphin. Though a Dolphin Fish has a big fin up its back... Okay it doesn't look like either a dolphin or a sturgeon but when you say Dolphin, you don't think of that freaky big headed thing, you think of Flipper. A mammal. Smooth, squeaky clean, jumping ahead of the spray from a ship.

I think the Disney Swan and Sturgeon kind of has a nice ring to it, and certainly fits their motif better. Anyway, the Swan and Sturgeon (aka Dolphin) hotels are practically twin hotels separated by a lake and a walkway. They sort of share 5 swimming pools. The difference is at the Dolphin we were closer to the interesting pools. The pool next to the Swan is a big square pool - the one I put in my last post. The Dolphin had one of those, then a large 3 foot deep kid pool, then a volleyball pool, the waterfall pool (also pictured in my previous post) with a slide going into it, and another little pool on the other side. They're all connected by sidewalks, but the elevators right outside our room dropped us down to right by the kid pool and waterfall pool we were interested in, and it all worked beautifully.

Hubby got us a room upgrade, so we had a great big room. Sort of. The hotel room layout left us scratching our heads - so much space that could have been utilized so much more effectively. There was a big wide hallway down the side of the room... just a weird layout but it was bigger than the usual hotel room. The 2nd bed was a small uncomfortable fold-out couch which the two girls shared the first night. Since Thing 2 is a kicker and sleeps really hot and Thing 1 is always freezing, (and there was a perfect nook for it in that big room) we got a roll away bed in the corner the next night. The girls were enchanted with that and they swapped who got to sleep on the roll-away for the rest of our stay.

Hubby knows so many more people at these conferences than he knows in our home town so this was a real social event for him. Standing in line to check in or go to a restaurant or get on the bus and he has people saying hello and talking shop. I'd send him for a yogurt and not seem him for an hour. There's lots of networking with other computer conference buddies. He did blow off quite a bit of the conference to be with us, though.

A guy named David who Hubby works with sometimes has a 7 1/2 year old we'll call Thing A. David was coming to the conference and his wife is out of the country so he contacted us a couple weeks before to see if I would watch his munchkin at the conference while he was busy doing conference stuff. So my girls had someone to play with.

All six of us spent the day on Sunday at Magic Kingdom. My girls are old hands at Disney and were very excited to just fast pass Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain, which in DisneyWorld are very conveniently located right next to each other. Thing A and her dad have never really been to a Disney park before, and she wasn't sure about some of the rides. So we split up by families and Hubby and I took our little Disney veterans on everything we could fast pass. It was all in all a good day at the Magic Kingdom.

The other big Disney day was Tuesday. In evaluating our past DisneyWorld experience we had seen that there were just a few things at the three other parks besides Magic Kingdom that really held the girls' interest. So we figured maybe we could get a park hopper and do all three of the other parks in one day. Thing A came with us while her daddy stayed at the conference. We hit the Animal Adventure to do the Safari Ride, which last time we were there was amazing, this time there weren't too many animals around.

Thing 2 had been looking forward to having her face painted.

Thing A and Thing 2 with their face paint.

We saw quite a few animals, the most memorable was this mother and baby gorilla.

We were at Animal Adventure park for 3-4 hours, then hopped a bus to the Hollywood Studios park. The only thing there for the girls, really, was the Honey I Shrunk The Kids playground and a Toy Story ride. The girls all thought the playground was great, and we let them run around there for an hour. I stayed at the playground while Hubby walked over to fast pass the Toy Story ride, and found that they weren't Fast Passing, and the line wait was an hour and a half the first time he checked, and between an hour and two hours the subsequent times he checked. No Thanks. We gathered up the kids and took them to Epcot.

The Honey I Shrunk The Kids Playground



I hadn't given Epcot enough credit. We could have spent a lot more time there. Last time it seemed that Epcot was just about food and shopping from different countries, and we spent the whole time looking for the two or three rides that are there. But this time we went through Spaceship Earth, and didn't have time for all the other things to see in the front circle, before you even get back to the countries. As expected, we ran out of time. The girls wanted to shop in Japan for Pokemon stuff, and we promised them dinner in Mexico. We hit it all kind of quick, and didn't even get over to the Aquarium part, which we've seen before and is very neat. We ended up meeting David back at the hotel at 10:30 at night or so. 3 parks with 3 little girls in 12 hours. As we rode the bus back to the hotel Thing 2 told me, "Today's been a LARGE day."

At Epcot they give the kids a paper mask on a stick that they can color. At every country there is someone from that country at a desk who will stamp the kids' masks and put a hang tag on it representing their country. The kids think this is really cool.


The girls liked Japan.

The other days we mostly spent at the pool, or letting the girls play at the hotel room. They like to get me out of their hair when they're doing their pretend play, but with me there in the room with them they were a little inhibited.
I took the girls to a restaurant that had the kids menus on viewmasters. What a clever idea!

The last night we were there David and Thing A were going to a restaurant over in the Swan where they have Disney characters come around to the tables to say hello. We joined them and saw Pluto and Goofy. The girls were tickled pink.

We were scheduled to come home Saturday evening, tonight. However, on Thursday night as we were assessing what to do with our last day we looked at reviews for Universal Studios and saw that apparently the whole world is visiting Universal Studios to see Harry Potterville. There were reports of 2 hour lines for rides, and huge lines just to get into the shops. Since we hate lines so bad, and based on our experience with Disney's Hollywood Studios that there are more shows there than rides, we decided we'll wait until the kids are a little older to do that. We could have done a Cirque du Soleil show at Downtown Disney on Friday night. David and Thing A saw one and said it was wonderful. Then Hubby told me he was leaving home on a 6:00 a.m. flight Sunday morning, and had a boatload of stuff to do to get ready for that. So instead of getting home at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday and having him pull another all-nighter on Saturday, we decided to end our fun a day early. After Hubby went to the closing keynote speech on Friday morning he called Delta and found they could get us on a plane that evening.

The girls were very disappointed to hear they wouldn't have another day at the hotel pool, but we placated them with a couple hours at the pool with Daddy while I stayed in the room and packed us up. We were out by 2:00 p.m., which meant we didn't have to pay for the hotel that night, and we caught our plane to make it back last night.

Did I mention the rainstorms every afternoon while we were in Orlando? Anything from a good sprinkle to a real gullywasher would hit at least once each day, if not two or three times a day while we were there. As we were boarding the plane they said there was a micro storm burst coming in and if we didn't get out ahead of it we'd be stuck there for a while. Apparently we made it out just in time, and landed early back home. We quickly got in and unloaded the car, fed the last two living crickets to the gecko (who did just fine and is still fat tailed and happy), and got the kids in their pajamas. As we were brushing the girls' teeth the doorbell rang and who should be standing on our doorstep but my sister, with Kelso and her dogs. She and her darling husband drove the hour and 45 minutes down to drop off the dog, then they hugged everyone and turned around to drive an hour and 45 minutes back to their house. That's a three and a half hour drive for them, just because they're sweet, completely saving us a trip to go get him. Above and beyond!

Hubby started printing last night and has had the printer going most of the morning today. I doubt if he would have gotten much sleep at all if we hadn't have come home a day early. I'm sad to have missed a day of playing, but all in all this was better. The girls are upstairs happily pretending in their room, the dog is asleep at my feet, I can blog and run some laundry, and the gecko will have dinner today. Hubby can help me move the old TV out of the new Toy Room in preparation for the friends from out of town who will get here at the end of the week, in addition to getting ready for his next trip. It's good to be home.

Orlando Bound

We leave for Florida in the morning. Hubby has a conference in Orlando and when he first suggested the girls and I come too I told him no thanks, we've done DisneyWorld twice already (for someone who lives a 5 hour plane ride away and has 7 and 8 year old kids that's saying a lot, I think), and sure, DisneyWorld is fine, but for the age of our kids I kind of prefer DisneyLand... and we've been-there-done-that more than a lot of people who live in California, I think. Save up those frequent flier miles for something cool. (Wow, how blase am I?) Then he told me the conference is at the Disney Swan. What?? (We don't stay at the Swan. Too pricey for us little po' folks.) And of course the conference pays for the hotel room. WHAT? So instead of trying to keep the kids from tearing apart a swanky hotel room or watching them paddle in the gorgeous empty pristine boring pool miles from anything but the nearest golf course and $8.00 bagel I get to lounge by a DISNEY pool with slides and waterfalls and a Disney park or Downtown Disney only a bus ride away? Well, that's completely different!

Tomorrow this will be us!!!

Uh oh... that looks like a plain boring square conference hotel pool to me. We'll have to see if there's not something more interesting around somewhere. We stayed at the Port Orleans before and that pool doesn't look much better from the internet, but it had a section of slides and squirty things for the kiddies off to the right out of the picture, I think.
Oh, here is what we saw, there are slides and waterfalls off behind this thing in the Port Orleans pool.


A second search found a more fun looking picture of the Swan pool. It looks like there is at least a waterfall somewhere, obviously there's more than one pool. And the Swan pool comes with that fun person to throw my kids into the air. Oh, yes, this will work!

The other time we stayed at a DisneyWorld property hotel we moved from the boring conference hotel to the Disney hotel just long enough to go to the parks, then we flew home. We didn't plan time in at Disney to just swim, we bought a four day pass, went to the parks every day, and it was always too late at the end of the day to let the kids play in the Disney pool. We just walked by it, listening to the other children having fun. My kids had to go to the PARKS. I am the mean mommy who dragged her crying little girls past the pool, as they stretched their little hands out to it, "But MOMMY! We want to SWIM! We want to play in the water! We wa-"
"NO! NO! We have TICKETS! You will GO to the PARK and you will RIDE the RIDES and you will BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!" That was me before. But this time, this time we may go to a park or two in between pool days, if we feel like it, but we have at least three days, maybe more, while daddy is conferencing. That's three or four full days we will be those folks sitting by the pool. Or I will be, anyway, while the kids swim. I think I better throw an extra novel into my suitcase. And another bottle of waterproof sunscreen. And a hat.

The dog will be staying at my fabulous sister's Dog Resort, playing with his doggy cousins for the week we're gone. I lost my good pre-trip packing days by driving him up to my sister's on Wednesday and stayed over Thursday to do some stuff at my mom's, then got back really late on Thursday and packed today. Today I washed every stitch of dirty clothing in the house, took the kids to their final swimming lesson, ran to the grocery store, and DID NOT get the battery replaced in either of my water proof watches, which torques my hide. Wah.

Hubby got home about 9:00 tonight from 4 days in New Jersey. We're almost completely packed and I've got to go to bed, there are just those nagging little things that I know I've forgotten... The plane leaves at 10:00 tomorrow morning so I won't have much time to figure it out. Hubby's probably going to pull an all-nighter getting ready for the conference... there just aren't enough hours in the day to be him. I keep thinking of that old movie where Michael Keaton cloned himself...

Doin' Disney

We got up and packed half our stuff, then left for Disneyland pretty early, and checked in early to the GRAND CALIFORNIAN.  Holy cow.  It was like the Yellowstone Lodge, only less rustic.  Maybe a little more calculatedly rustic.  But a pretty nice hotel. Our intent was just to drop off our bags and stuff, but of course the girls are completely enchanted with the hotel and it's hard to get them to leave.

Checking into the parks from the hotel was amazingly easy.  The hotel was prohibitively expensive, and I kept telling Hubby that the Ramada across the street is just about as convenient, but I can't argue that this hotel is uber convenient.
We had three wonderful days at Disneyland.  The way we do the parks we need all three days, as Hubby and I are a little driven to do stuff, but the girls are not, so it takes three days for us to get in everything we want.  Though we never talked the girls into Indiana Jones, Space Mountain was out of commission, and we end up doing Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain more than he or I would choose.  I do quite a bit with Thing 2 while Hubby and Thing 1 go to the animation academy and learn how to draw different characters.  Thing 2 is not interested in that.   

The girls love the bear playground thing in California Adventure.  They have to hit this smoke jumper thing several times before we can do anything else.

 They have to walk their lines up to the launching area on the right, then they ride the line to the end and it pops them up, and jerks them back a little.  They love it.

Though she grows older, the Merry-Go-Round is still one of her favorite rides.


 I brought some food in our backpack, which worked out well as some of the food lines were really long, and one which Hubby stood in for about 10 minutes didn't move at all, so he bailed and we had dried mangoes and beef jerky for lunch that day.  We tried to eat in the park, really we did, but just kept finding it easier to eat what I brought.  We met a friend of mine for dinner at the House of Blues on Tuesday, which was marvelous.  It was wonderful catching up, he seems to be doing really well.  On the last day, Thursday, we had lunch at the Blue Bayou because that was the only reservation available.  Hubby was floored at how much that set us back.  I figure it averaged out by our not buying much food the rest of the time we were in the park.  Aside from a few ice creams and popcorn, we hardly bought anything.
We put the girls off on buying a souvenir until the end of the day, at least because I hate carrying those sacks around.  Thing 1 has become a first class negotiator.  I told them I would buy them each a souvenir of the trip.  Thing 1 decided she wanted some Legos from the lego store, but then saw some club Penguin stuff she wanted, so she told me that she'd buy the club penguin stuff with her back allowance.  I am terrible about remembering to pay them their allowance, so fine, they each get to pick two things.  The trouble is trying to get everything to add up financially.  But the first part of the negotiations went well.  Thing 2 picked out a little doll thing like a polly pocket where the doll is Minnie Mouse.
The trouble came the next morning, Thursday.  Both girls were so obsessed with what they'd spend their souvenir money on, Hubby suggested we just go do that first thing, then take it out to the car and then enjoy our day.  Okay fine.  We checked out of the hotel, then went shopping.  Thing 2 heads straight to Build A Bear.  I think they already have enough stuffed animals, they don't play much with them, but it's their choice, and I can't deny the lure of the build-a-bear ritual, and it ends up meaning more to them than just picking out a stuffed Disney character from the Disney store.  Thing 2 picks out a bear and is going through the whole ordeal of stuffing it, rubbing the little heart on all her body parts as instructed before the helper drops it in the bear's back and sews him shut, and picking out an outfit.  (I encouraged her to get something Disney related, she bought a Downtown Disney tee shirt) 
Thing 1 was going crazy.  She started jonesing for a build a bear.  She started negotiating.  She promised to eat meatloaf if I'd buy her a bear.  What about the legos?  The problem with the legos was that the set she wanted wasn't in the store, they were out.  They expect them the day after we leave.  Hubby finds them online on her iphone and we can order them, but she won't have them today.  Well, she wants the legos too, but she wants the bear for something else.  She is practically in physical pain about this, writhing around.  Hubby starts looking at me with puppy dog eyes.  He can't deny them anything they REALLY want and she seems to REALLY want this stuffed dog.   I think.  Okay.  You can have this dog today, for your Disney souvenir.  You can have the Legos in a couple of months, when you mark off all the days of your homework chart.  Yippeee!  Everyone's happy.
She gets her dog, stuffs it, puts the heart in it, picks out a sweater for it.  We're standing in the line, the sales person has put each girl's stuffed animal and associated accessories into their little take home boxes which they're holding, they've swiped my credit card, I'm just waiting for the screen to come up for me to sign and she slaps her hand to her forehead and says "Oh No!"
What?
I've made a mistake.  A horrible mistake.
What?
I don't want the dog.
....  Too late, honey, you've got the dog. I sign the pad, we go out of the store and I turn to her and say "What's going on?"
She says "I don't know how I'll play with the dog."  This is something Hubby pointed out to her in the negotiations for the stuffed animal.  She plays with legos all the time, but we don't see her playing with stuffed animals.
She admits she wanted the stuffed animal because Thing 2 was getting a stuffed animal, and because she likes GETTING the stuffed animal, the ritual (not her words).  But she doesn't really WANT the stuffed animal.
Sigh.  Well, she's got it now.
Hubby took the bear and dog to the car while I sat in the hotel lobby with the girls, assuring Thing 1 with all my ability how cute the dog is, what a good choice it was, why it made sense at the time she made the choice.  She cried, she sniffled, she seemed resolved.
Then she started negotiating about when she's going to get those legos.
We fast passed a bunch of rides and had a very nice day at the park.

Vacations

I can pretend my life is about me... but it's really about them. That's okay, they're more entertaining anyway. So I guess I'll just dive right in. This is a photo that they took of Thing 1 at school, and I really like it.

We spent two weeks in Oceanside with my folks this year, and had a fabulous time. One of the really great things was we didn't get robbed while we were there.

We had quite a bit of time to relax and play on the beach, which the girls really enjoyed. Of course in February the weather was a little cold, but we did have a couple of really good days and it seems like we were able to get out to the beach almost every day. Thing 1 and Hubby tried to build some sand castles, but Thing 2 was the professional destruction force that knocked them down as fast as they were built. They had a marvelous time running away from the waves, screaming a lot, and digging in the sand. They loved burying things and digging them back up, making lines in the sand, and crawling around. We also went to both the zoo and Wild Animal park and had really nice times there. Our memberships were good from last year, and so we went as much as we could... though I think we should have gone another day or two anyway.

One of the other highlights of the trip was three days in Disneyland. Like last year, the girls found a ride they liked and stuck with it. I think Thing 2 and I rode the Toon Town roller coaster no fewer than thirty times one evening. After the crowds leave if you ask them, they'll just let you go again and again if no one else is waiting to get on your car. Hubby got queasy after about the third time through and stuck it out to be a good sport, but Thing 2 and I could have gone all night. The girls were also more willing to pose with the characters this year. In the past they have been very shy of anyone in a big suit, but this year they were more willing to talk to and stand with the characters. They had especially good experiences with Mickey, who made a big fuss and spent a lot of time gesturing with them, and Tigger, who took one of their hands in each of his and hopped off with them. The rest of the crowd, including me and Hubby, followed like the pied piper's band. It was one of my favorite moments of our park visit.

I guess that's all for one night....