October break trip to Southern California
For the latter half of the second week of October break, we went to Southern California. I worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we woke up Thursday at three and left at four. We had planned on doing two days at Disneyland and one at the beach. We weren't sure whether to do the beach first or Disneyland, so we decided that when we arrived in LA, we'd see how we feel.
The ride was pretty smooth. In fact, we were making great time until after the grapevine and then all of the LA traffic started piling up, even in the carpool lane. But we still made good time and decided to go to Dizzyland first. We unloaded the kids, packed lunches, and entered the happiest place on earth.
I like Disneyland because of its cleanliness, friendly staff, and impressive engineering. The kids like it for the cool rides. Heidi had stocked up on junk food and I was excited for that, because we usually do boring sandwiches and the kids talk us into a four dollar churro. This time, we survived with trail mix, marshmallows, granola bars, and corn nuts. We even had some knock-off girl scout cookies from Winco that were super good.
The kids did pretty well in the lines.
Tyler and Heidi used the stroller pass to ride Splash Mountain, and Tyler, Kira, Blakey and I sat down in this little plaza. They played tag for about a half hour while I sat on a bench and rested.
The double Bob stroller carries all four kids.
Kira fell asleep and almost fell out of the stroller.
Kira, Blakey and I did the jungle cruise while Heidi, Scott and Tyler rode Indiana Jones.
They climbed up and down the fence for quite a while until we met up with Heidi again.
One of the few family portraits we have, taken by the iphone. Not bad.
People wait hours to see Mickey, and he just turned up out of the blue, so I quickly snapped this.
You gotta hand it to the people who play these characters. Like, when their shift is over, do they say, "Alright, I'm going on my break now."? Or does someone else show up in the same costume, and the attendant says, "Captain America has his replacement."? Our guy stayed in character and asked each of the kids their names. Blakey said, "Blakey."
We body surfed and boogie boarded for several hours. This is a nice action shot of Heidi even though she only caught a couple of waves before getting too cold.
Scott was in and out of the water. He caught quite a few waves with me. We stood out in the waist deep water, which was up to his neck, and he'd say, "Now, Daddy?" Sometimes I'd stand and give him a push to catch the waves; other times, we'd both jump on my command and ride them into shore. It was pretty sweet.
Tyler had more fun playing in the sand.
Kira spent most of her time out of the water but went in just to try it out.
It was a great trip. Great to get away, great to spend time with the fam, and great to eat junk food. Oh, the Howard Johnson hotel we stayed in was quite the bargain. There was a pretty nice breakfast buffet with bacon, eggs, pancakes, pastries, orange juice, and some other things. The kids loved the bacon. The HJ also had a shuttle to Disneyland, which is valued at over $17 since that's what it would be to park at the resort. The hotel itself, was, er, run down. But it worked for us. The kids loved watching TV after the beach and we watched two episodes of celebrity wife swap. I'll limit my comments to my other blog.
It was a great vacay. The van ran well even though we had to stop every fifteen miles on the way home so the kids could go to the bathroom. I was like, "You just went!" And along I-5, there aren't rest stops or even habitable cities that you can just pull into. Sometimes we had to make emergency stops. Ah, youth.
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