Instablogged, Fall Edition

Walking with the waterfowl.

Swinging at Patapsco.

Balancing at Patapsco.

Wading in the Patapsco.

Our Little Monkey lives up to the nickname he was given at birth.

Teaching Beckett a family favorite. He wasn't ready for the aggravating rules.

Spring tree is now a fall tree.

Florida sunset with Lara, Ashley, and Annie after a busy day being an Art Historian.

This is why I find grocery shopping so exhausting. (Also, buying donuts while Felix still calls them "doh-dohs." That's now a thing of the past along with "uh-huh," "buvee" and "dub-um."

Train boys wear train shirts

Behold my seldom-seen face.

Felix's hair flowing in the wind.

Felix now screams "cheese."

First snow.

Thanksgiving hair.

Dentist day.

A big day. Beckett, who has been working through his fear of riding his bike, decides he's ready to take it to school.

Preschool winter walk.

Christmas Eve at the Train Garden.

Beyond Disneyland

One morning we all headed out to Newport Beach. After a couple of days at Disneyland, it was really nice to relax in the sun.

Meeting the Characters

I had never been to Disneyland with anyone that really cared about meeting the characters. The first time I went to Disneyland was in 8th grade, and it was all about the rides, of course. Even my little sister was a little too old to be completely enchanted by the characters. My kids, however, were young enough to really get the full character-meeting experience.

Several months before our trip to Disneyland Nate and I realized that our kids really hadn't seen that many Disney movies, so we started watching one a week. Our prep work really paid off. I think the kids had a lot more fun because they had knew the movies and recognized the characters.

Peter Pan was probably the boys favorite movie, and Captain Hook was the very first character that we saw. According to Beckett, "He's not scary. He's silly." The Peter Pan ride was a huge hit too. 

Over in Toon Town we met a bunch of the traditional characters.

Felix was so excited about meeting Mickey. It was totally worth the 20 minute wait. I just wish I had a better picture.

When we ask Felix who he was most excited to meet he always says Lightning McQueen. Pretty much only his parents understand that's what he is saying, however.

Felix: "Please, Mommy I see Lightning McQueen. Please, please Mommy." He's too excited to even look away for a moment.

Another really fabulous character experience was meeting Tinkerbell at her house. The kids were really excited to meet Tinkerbell because they love Peter Pan and because she flies over the castle before every Disney movie. Tinkerbell has the perfect pixie voice. She really embodied the character. Jen and her kids went to see Tinkerbell the next day, and they also had rave reviews.

Felix got a lot of attention from Tinkerbell because he was wearing a "it's my birthday button." We took it off after this encounter because Daysha kept telling everyone who wished him happy birthday that his birthday wasn't really until February.

We met Aurora right outside her castle. She was awfully sweet to the boys and told them she knew they were just as brave as Prince Phillip. After these pictures I went and bought Beckett a short-sleeve shirt. We weren't really prepared for how warm it was this day.

Nate and I agreed that Mary Poppins and Bert was our favorite character encounter. Beckett has never seen Mary Poppins, and I don't know about Daysha. Nate and I, however, love that movie, and we got a huge kick out of their conversation with the kids. Mary reminded Daysha that manners matter. When Beckett got really excited about the cars ride Mary said, "My, that sounds supercalafragilisticexpialidocious." When the kids were dawdling at picture time she said, "Spit spot." Really, she was practically perfect in every way.

While the big kids were riding the Radiator Springs Racers, I took Felix to meet Mater. This was surely his second favorite character encounter. And a close second at that. These life-size cars are so cool. We saw Red here too, but we didn't get to meet him.

We got super lucky when it came to meeting Anna and Elsa. It was about 30 minutes to closing when we walked into the building where you could meet Anna and Elsa. We were actually there to do something else, but the Disney worker told us that we could get in line to meet Anna and Elsa without a fastpass because it was almost closing time. I said, "Anna and Elsa are really here? Like the real Anna and Elsa." When he assured me that was the case, I said, "Well, we are definitely doing that."

So we got in line, and it was a bit of a wait. We had our kids, Lila, Hazel, and Nate's mom and dad with us. We were getting really close to the front of the line when Jen texted. She and Savannah and Daysha had just finished riding the California Screamer. So we told her to hustle over to meet Anna and Elsa. We let a few families go in front of us to give Jen and the big girls a chance to make it over. And then we all got to go into Anna and Elsa's castle together. Hazel was completely star struck. It was so fun to watch her meeting a rock star.

Disneyland

Nate's family spent over a year planning a reunion in Disneyland. We stayed in two houses about a mile and a half from the park. We had a fabulous time. It was the first time my kids had been to Disneyland, and I had so much fun watching them have so much fun.

We arrive at the park! The crew is pretty thrilled to be there.

Daysha, Savannah, Will

We spent our first morning in Fantasyland. The kids were well prepped for this portion of the park. 

Story boats

I'm not exactly sure why, but Casey Jr. really put me in the Disney spirit. I was alone with the three kids (we had Daysha for much of our trip). Nate had run over to the Radiator Springs Racers ride to get fastpasses. The line of Casey Jr takes forever, even when it's short, but the kids, by this point, were getting into the groove and waiting wasn't so bad. We finally climbed onto the train. It plays the music from Dumbo, which is such a happy cheerful song, and my kids have seen Dumbo tons of times and love it, in part, because of the train. Then the train got to this steep portion of the track and started doing the "I think I can. I think I can" bit from the movie. And Beckett said, "Casey Junior is saying 'I think I can. I think I can.' I know that because I can speak steam!"

I have so many pictures of Daysha with this joyous face.

Daysha and Beckett liked Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Felix started crying when Toad goes to hell. He didn't ride it again. Daysha and Beckett had some disagreements over who would get to drive, but Daysha was always so nice to Beckett and really was asset to our little crew because she was generally the peace-maker of the bunch.

I think we got ice cream at the Ghirardelli shop over in California Adventure three times. Felix slept through this one.

Speaking of sleeping in the park, Felix took a nap in the stroller every day. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have napped every day at the house. When he was ready to sleep, he would climb into the bottom seat of the stroller and zonk out. One day he slept for three hours in the park. It gave us plenty of time to ride bigger rides with Beckett, and it helped Felix adjust to California time.

The new Cars Land in California Adventure is amazing. You turn the corner and suddenly you are in Radiator Springs. They have Flo's Diner and the Cozy Cone. They have life-size tractors and cars, Casa Della Tires, and lots of neon. They even have the orange cliffs of Ornamental Valley. The Radiator Springs Racers ride is really fun. It's one of the newer rides in the park so we always fastpassed it. Beckett loved the race at the end. The first time we rode it he shouted, "I won!" when we got to the end of the ride. Felix wasn't tall enough to ride and luckily didn't know what he was missing.

If you look closely you can see that Beckett is completely focused on whether or not we are winning.

At Casa Della Tires we had a lot of fun riding Luigi's Flying Tires with the whole crew. This ride is kind of like a giant air hockey table.

Heimlich's Chew Chew in A Bug's Land is a pretty goofy ride, but it makes for some fun pictures. We were all able to ride this together.

The whole crew also went on Small World.

There were a few disappointments on this trip. I think the big one for Beckett (and me because I had the displeasure of riding it with him) was Autopia. Beckett was really looking forward to driving his own car, but as we were going around the track he got pretty discouraged pretty quickly until he said, "I'm not driving this car. This car is driving itself." You're right, B. It is.

Beckett, however, loved the big rides. I had this idea that we should ease him into the roller coasters. Do Thunder Mountain first and then Space Mountain, but then we had fastpasses to Space Mountain, so we just did it. I  made Beckett ride with Nate because I didn't want to be involved if it all went south, but he loved it. Space Mountain was one of his very favorite rides. He rode it three times, and was smiling huge in every picture.

Apparently Beckett is a dare devil because he also loved Tower of Terror. Nate and I didn't go on this ride because it makes us sick, but it's Val's favorite, and he really wanted to take Beckett on it. After Beckett loved Space Mountain, we decided why not let him go. Beckett really wanted to. He said, "Even if it's scary, it will still be fun." When we met up with Val and Beckett afterwards they were both all hyped up. Beckett told Val, "I'm flying. I'm flying." On the last night we gave Beckett the option of riding Tower of Terror again with Papa Val or going to the parade with us. He picked Tower of Terror. This is the picture from that ride. He's so serious.

One thing that I learned on this trip is that nearly three is definitely old enough to not just enjoy Disneyland but for a Disneyland trip to really be worth the effort. I was a little nervous how Felix would do, but he had a fabulous time. The only rides he couldn't do were the big ones and Splash Mountain and the Matterhorn were closed so that really only left Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Star Tours, and Radiator Springs Racers (Beckett isn't all enough to ride California Screamer or Indiana Jones, anyway).

Felix's favorite rides were Buzz Lightyear (he loves Buzz and Woody), Mater's Junkyard Jamboree (we called it the tractor ride), and Ariel's Undersea Adventure. Seriously, he loved the Ariel ride. He hasn't even seen the movie. That was one we didn't get to, he kept asking us, "I do mermaid ride?" And he cried the last time we got off it. Just the other day, out of the blue he turned to me and said, "Mommy, I do mermaid ride."

The other big hit was Tom Sawyer's Island. (It has a pirate theme now. It's called Pirate's Lair at Tom Sawyer's Island.) Beckett has been talking about all the caves and running around over there. 

There are plenty of trains at Disneyland to keep the train kids happy. The train was actually one of the other big disappointments of the trip, at least for Nate and me. Through a series of miscalculations and bad luck our wait at the train station was really long. Then Felix was crazy on the train, and the whole thing was underwhelming. The monorail was another story. I had actually never ridden the monorail, but we had to do it because, train, obviously. We went with a bunch of the cousins, and I sat in the back with them. What a fun crew.

Because we were in Disneyland for so long, we got to do everything we wanted to. On our last day we saw a bunch of the shows. We really enjoyed the Disney Jr. show. (Mickey! Jake and the Neverland Pirates!) Mickey's Magical Map was fun too. Beckett was just talking about the singing orangutan that performed in that show.

On our last day at the park we also watched both of the parades. The Pixar parade in California Adventure was really fun. (Felix: "Woody! Buzz Lightyear! Lightning McQueen! Mater!") We watched that parade with the whole crew. I had never really seen the parades because I've really only been to Disneyland a handful of times, and I've always been to busy riding the rides during the slow time. I really enjoyed the parades. It was a fun way to end the trip. Nate and I took Hazel and Felix to the last parade by ourselves, and it was like having twins. Hazel was so in love with all the princesses.

I'm ready to go back.