Thanksgiving part III

Day three of Disneyland was almost our breaking point. That many days of insufficient sleep for the kids, coupled with over stimulation and more walking than any of us had done in our whole lives made for a less than ideal day at the park, but by no means a wash. We got all ready to go and headed over to the park the latest we had so far, arriving about 10 am. This meant that Disneyland was pretty packed already, so we got fast passes for Star Tours and then wadded through the lines for a few rides. Alice in wonderland, Matterhorn, Pinocchio's boat ride, and Dumbo's train. After those lines, we decided we'd had enough of the lines and stopped for our picnic lunch we packed. Evelynn has already been warned several times about her behavior, so I wasn't ready for Eloise's melt down at lunch. I don't even know why it happened, but she started screaming about something so I buckled her in timeout in the stroller. After a minute or so she started to get very anxious and screaming again. I told her she couldn't get out until her time was up and she calmed down, but she wouldn't calm down. Finally, mid tantrum, she screamed "I HAVE TO GO POTTY!!" and then peed all over the stroller. It was then that I realized that we had left the hotel without her going to the bathroom that morning, which means she hadn't used the bathroom since sometime yesterday at dinner. I felt so bad, but I was also hopping mad and mortally embarrassed. Luckily I brought spare clothes (though no spare underwear) and we got her cleaned up and the stroller mopped up and lined with a trusty poncho, and I firmly told Eloise that she had to take a nap, to which she meekly obeyed. She slept for almost two hours in the stroller. Meanwhile Evelynn was enjoying more princess time. Cinderella had wandered over again, and Evelynn got to meet her. I didn't witness it, but I was told that she and Evelynn are now best friends forever, pinky promise. Evelynn also met with the fairy god-mother, but I have no idea what she said to her. Then we watched Mary Poppins and Burt do a dance with the back-up band, and I was extremely disappointed that Burt did not sing his songs, but the band leader did. My only disappointment with Disney. We spent the rest of the day at California adventure, checking out shows and whatnot. We saw Phineas and Ferb, which I thought would be the highlight for Evelynn since she loves that show, but she refused to dance or sing along, probably because she had reached her park limit as well. But her bad mood was mostly solved when we went over to the animation studio. For those of you who don't know, Evelynn loves to draw, and so her learning how to draw Tigger was really cool. And I must say, for a five year old she did a very respectable job. Eloise woke up at this time, so we went over to Bug's Life land. I must say that this part of the park is lame. It's for babies and small children who are not cool like my kids and don't want to go on the cool rides. But the bumper cars were a huge hit. I choose to sit that one out, on account of it being my turn to be extremely tired and grumpy. :) Luckily the park sells Diet Coke. Grandma and Grandpa then took the kids to go get ice cream, and the rest of us met up to go ride the Tower of Terror. Ok, some background. I don't like those rides that drop you straight down, or shoot you up high and then drop you, or even roller coasters that have too steep of a hill. It sets something off in my brain that makes me TERRIFIED. There is a fine line for me between fun and exciting and a near death experience. Tower of Terror crossed that line. At the time I didn't want the picture they took on the ride, but now I do because it shows my absolute terror on that ride, with Doug sitting next to me trying to reassure me as the ride is dropping. It seems like a funny picture now, not so then. I had to physically clamp down so I didn't start sobbing "I don't like this! I WANT TO GET OFF!!" repeatedly throughout the ride. Poor Doug felt so bad. He wanted us to ride this one so badly because it was one of his favorites. I will not be riding on it again anytime soon.

That evening we were planning on cutting things short to go back to the hotel to play some of the games we drove down from Utah together as a family, but after getting the kids to bed we all zoned out watching the TV and fell asleep! So no games, but a decent bed time, thank goodness. The next day was Saturday and we decided we wanted to go to the beach, which was great because it was the warmest day yet (75 degrees). Mom and Dad's plane didn't leave until later that evening, and we were planning on stopping off in Vegas for the night so we were in no rush to check out. We packed up our room and lazed about watching Saturday morning cartoons (which FYI are so amazingly stupid. We finally switched to Tom and Jerry to get some quality television).Suddenly, the power went out. Then back on, along with the fire alarm, then out again, and stayed out. We were all like "Uh, is there a fire?" We looked outside and couldn't see smoke, and the cleaning staff seemed completely unconcerned (in fact they didn't miss a beat and kept right on with their jobs, so maybe this happens often) so we remained calm. Then someone told us we had to leave the building and they weren't letting people back. So our check out time got moved up to right now. Unfortunately, because there was no power, there was no elevator, and we had 3 bags, games, a cooler with food, coats, hats, umbrellas, and umbrella stroller, backpack and three kids to tote down 6 flights of stairs. Luckily, we had B.O.B. We literally loaded B.O.B. up with all our gear minus the children and pillows and backed it down 6 flights of stairs. It was intense, I didn't know if our stroller would be able to handle that kind of stress, but amazingly it came out without any damage, sturdy and amazing as ever. Doug's hand sustained minor injury because of unforgiving cement walls and corners, but we made it. The front desk was unavailable so we dropped off our keys and just left because we were not going to wait around for things to get sorted out. We were headed to the OCEAN!

It was a lovely day at the beach. Not very warm, but warm enough to be fine in our swimsuits. After seeing the surfers out catching some pretty good waves, we rented some boogie boards and caught our own. The water was cold, but not as cold as the pacific can get. This wasn't the "It's so cold it hurts!" cold, it was more "AAAAHHHIIIEEEEE! It's DANG cold, but I'll live." We all took turns until the tide went way out and the waves died down. All my kids had a ton of fun at the beach, but I think my hubby might have had the most fun. It was so funny to see the natives in their pants and jackets and shoes saying "My what a chilly day!"  You could tell which people were vacationing because they had shorts, t-shirts or just swimsuits on like we did. :) Michael was pretty cute to watch on the beach. There was this hill of sand that lead down to the water, and he spent most of the 3 hours we were there trying to climb up it. I couldn't figure out why until I helped him to the top one time, and then he proceeded to chase the seagulls around, barking at them and laughing when they flew away. That's my boy. :) I was going to get pictures of Evelynn and Eloise, but they were mostly running up and down the beach collecting as many shells as they could. We came home with quite a big bag of them.

After about 3 hours we got showered, de-sanded ourselves, de-sanded our stuff, and de-sanded the kids like 5 times each (for some reason, once completely free of sand, each of my kids would then proceed to walk back out into the sand and then stare at me in confusion when I yelled at them to get OUT of the sand and wash off, again.) Then it was goodbyes until Christmas and an easy car ride to Vegas. That was a minor catastrophe in itself though. I booked us a hotel online on my phone while we were driving, and I put Doug's name and my sister-in-laws name on the rooms, but then I put my name on the credit card because that's the one I was using. Well when I went to get our keys at the lovely (not) Circus Circus, they told me that only the people who the rooms names were in had check in with photo ID. That caused a huge problem because Doug had parked in the parking garage forever away, and Kristen was not in his car either. So it took like an hour to check in. But the room was pretty nice for $35 each. Better than our hotel at Disneyland, but the walls were paper thin. We heard everything, including an extremely rowdy bunch that came in about 3 am. The contrast between Disneyland and Vegas was also jarring. It was crowded and had lots of lights and distractions like Disneyland did, but it was dirty, loud, lots of semi-naked men and women and so sleazy-adult verses magical little children stuff. But it was only for like 9 hours, and then we were off again, soon to be home.

Thank you so much Mom and Dad Jacobson for treating us to Disneyland. It was so much fun and I hope we can do it again some day!

Here's the picture of our Christmas tree this year. We decorated it soon after we got home. Please notice that all the ornaments are in the top half of the tree. What you can't see is the back of the tree, where there are no ornaments at all. :) Got to love the family tree.