Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Away

Happy Independence Day!  For those of you that are celebrating today, anything fun going on?

Wednesday I took the kids down to California and we're here until Monday.  Yesterday we went to Disneyland (one of my favorite places!) and today we're just going to hang out and have a bbq with our good friends.

Yesterday's Disney day was HOT! HOT! and I feel like we melted a bit during the day.  One of the neatest things, though, is we got to ride on the new Toy Story Ride.

The idea of the ride is you wear 3-D glasses and get to play carnival games for a score.  The "car" you sit in has a small "gun" type device mounted in front of you and you pull a string back and forth to fire off whatever it is you're shooting.  It could be as different as pies, darts, balls or rings and your job is to hit the targets for the most points.  We had a great time -- and had it not been so hot we probably would have waited in line again for it.  (The wait wasn't bad .. maybe 30 minutes.)  If you get a chance to get over to DCA, I'd recommend checking it out.

A Good Disney Day

Man was Disney crowded today!  The only good thing about going to Disney in summer is they're full staffed and lines go very quickly.  Our adventure there started about 3pm and we stayed until about 9:15.  We rode most of the rides we wanted (even got Liam to go on Splash Mountain which he wasn't thrilled with but at least he tried it) and had a good day.  Here are a couple of photos especially for my mom:

Liam LOVES frozen bananas

and Adrienne really likes the ice cream bars.

Waiting in line for Autopia -- this is probably Liam's favorite ride.

And last but not least, our trip on the teacups.  I spun them fast, fast and ended up being dizzy for quite a while afterwards.  It was worth it, though, to hear them laugh about it.

Quick Update

Things are progressing nicely at home while Adrienne, Liam and I are here in California.  I appreciate all the hard work Don and Travis (and my ex-BIL) have done and I'm sure Don appreciates that I am here with the other 2 out of their way and letting them do the moving their way.

Keeping these 2 busy isn't a hard job, but it does take some planning on our part.  Today we decided to try something new and went to Zoomar's Petting Zoo.  We weren't too sure how Liam would react around all the animals (you never know how he'll react, honestly) but he had a great time.  He and Adrienne loved feeding all the animals carrots and taking a pony ride.  Here are a couple of the photos I took. 

(I really, really need to get a better pocket digital camera.  I have a Pentax Optio S and it just doesn't do as good of a job as I'd like ... the lag between photos is dismal, half of the photos comes out blurry and the balance of color/brightness is usually completely off. Oh well, I love the size of it and it does well enough for quick access.)

Tomorrow we're off for a quick trip to Disneyland.  This will be our last trip before our annual passes expire so we're going to try to get our favorite rides in.  I know I want Tower of Terror, Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain, Adrienne will agree with those and add California Screamin' and Matterhorn while Liam will want to do the play area in California Adventure, Haunted Mansion and Pirates.  It should be a great day!

More Legoland Photos

I just loved looking at Las Vegas in Legos ...  Here's some of the (many) photos that Gigi took.  I love the attention to detail!

Our day today will consist of going to see Ratatouille and getting some game playing in (gotta win Liam in Monopoly today!)  Tomorrow ... Disney.  Do we really ever have to go home to "real life"?  :-) 

Legoland

The Bad and the Good

So far this has been one of our more interesting trips down here to California ... and not necessarily in a good way.  Let's get the bad out of the way first ...

Last night we got in to our friend's house about 7:30.  As we were bringing our stuff into the house I noticed that my back taillight cover was missing.  Yep, gone, not a trace.  That won't be fun to fix when we get back home but not only that I didn't want to drive it like that.  We talked with our friends and decided we'd all go out in their car, stop at an auto parts store and then go to dinner.  Got to the auto parts store, bought some red tape for the taillight and started on our way to the restaurant.  As we were driving we had an overwhelming smell of gasoline -- opening the windows made it was worse.  Luckily the restaurant wasn't too far away so we drove there to check it out.  Once we parked and turned off the car *boom* the engine pops and explodes.  Thankfully we were all able to get out in time before the fire really started fierce and no one was hurt.  As I told the kids the car and things are replaceable -- we're not.  Scary, scary but I thank G-d that we weren't hurt or killed.  The really amazing thing is the way the car was built -- there was really no damage done to the trunk and most of the things in the glove box and in the center console were salvagable.  Here's a couple of pictures:

And now the good ...

We had a wonderful, wonderful day at Disneyland today that started out with breakfast (one of Adrienne's favorite parts of the day):

 

and continued through the day with lots of fun rides and relaxation.  Liam tried two of the bigger rides today (Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain) and didn't care for either of them ...  and we rode some of the littler rides too (Pooh, Pinocchio, Teacups, Autopia, Haunted Mansion, Pirates) which was fun.

Liam got a new set of Mickey ears:

 

he and I both got a new pair of Crocs:

and Adrienne got a really adorable Bambi purse:

We also picked up a couple of things for the guys at home but they'll have to wait until we get home to see what they are.  :-)  Tomorrow I think the only thing on the menu is Eng's Chinese and a little shopping -- I expect it to be quiet and peaceful.  Whew!

Long Weekend

Today Adrienne, Liam and I are on our way to California to visit our friends.  I decided to take a long weekend with them so Travis can have his birthday party sleepover in peace.  Hey, if you were 15 would you want your brother and sister hanging out at YOUR birthday party?  I'm sure they'll have as good a time home as we plan on having in California.  Hopefully I'll have a post or two before Sunday when we get home but you never know.  :-)

Off to Tucson

'See' you on Sunday!

Long, Long Trip

Good news.  We got to see my great aunt and uncle today for the first time in years.  It was so awesome!  We stopped at their house on our way to our friend's house in southern California.  I definately want to make plans to go out to their house more often -- I know the kids would love to visit there too (they live on a lake and already Liam has plans for fishing).  I think next summer we'll plan on spending several days with them.

Bad news.  Traffic sucks.  Snow sucks.

This photo was taken while at an almost standstill driving into California this morning.  What should have only taken 3 hours to get to my great aunt & uncle's house took closer to 4.

 

And if the snow wasn't bad enough (that only lasted about 1/4 of the way into the trip) we then got stopped for 45 minutes for road construction.  This next photo is our view for about 1/2 of that time (at a virtual standstill -- we could have walked faster than we were moving):

Good news.  We made it here to Southern California in one piece -- even if the second half of our trip was filled with traffic, traffic and more traffic.  I know why they call the 91 a parking lot -- though I-15 was pretty much a parking lot too.  Ugh.  So, we're safe, sound and happy.  Tomorrow we're off to Disneyland to have a little fun in the sun.  :-) 

Quick Post

Thought I'd put in a quick post tonight and show off the photos that I took of the parade Friday afternoon.   Expect regular posts back tomorrow.  Have a good evening!