Disneyland: Day 1, part 1

So I'm going to apologize in advance for two things. One, Picasa only lets me post 4 pictures at a time so this will be a little bit fragmented. Also, I might include more detail than anyone wants to know because this is my only record-keeping source. So if you're just here for the pictures, ignore the text.

We got to Disneyland bright and early after our breakfast, and headed off on what was to be a rather ill-fated touring plan from my guidebook. This is us in new orleans squre on our way to splash mountain, which was closed. So we rode the Winnie the Pooh ride, and Brian thought it was scary. So next on the plan was the Haunted Mansion, and I thought if Winnie the Pooh was scary then forget that. But Brian wanted to go, so I took him, but as soon as they opened the door to the ride after a little preamble, he panicked and we had to back out of the line. Haha! I should have known.

Next on the plan was Pirates of the Carribean (this is Eli in front of it) but I thought that would be too scary too so we headed on to the Jungle cruise. That was pretty mild and I liked it a lot for the jokes and Brian liked the animals. After that we took the train over to toontown.

Look how strong we are!

Eli driving a toon car with grandpa.

To be continued!

Day 1: Character Breakfast

Our first day at Disneyland, we had a character breakfast at the Grand Californian Hotel. It was a beautiful place, and at 7:30, we had the place mostly to ourselves! That meant we got to spend a lot of time with the characters and the kids loved it.

Calvin too!

Brian giving a bear a hug. He loved these guys but I have no idea who they are...must be from a movie I didn't see.

Eli meeting Dale. I learned the difference between Chip and Dale on this trip.

Me and the boys with another unknown bear! (Yes, it's different than the first one!)

Halloween 2010

For Halloween we were kindly invited to trick-or-treat in Long Beach, in Alexander's grandma's neighborhood.

Getting gready to go out. This is one of the better pictures of Brian's costume. Unfortunately it seemed like nobody knew who The Man in the Yellow Hat was.

Me and the boys out on the trick-or-treat trail.

Brian holding Eli's hand...unfortunately Eli walked too slow for Brian and we were always behind.


All 4 of the boys! They all had a great time. It was a really neat place to go for halloween.

As a side note, Brian kept changing his mind about what he wanted to be for halloween. Little did he know he had no choices since I had packed his costume and flown it across the country. The first time I asked him what he wanted to be, it was "a caterpillar". Then for a while it was Tinkerbell. A store checker asked him what he was going to be and he said "a witch!" Finally, the day of halloween he decided he wanted to be a GPS and we had a good time joking about it. I told him if he wanted to put a box on his head and go around saying "Please drive to highlighted route" he could do that, so for the rest of the day he told everyone he was going as a GPS.

California 2010

Our first day in California, we went to visit Denise and Tim.

The sunshine! The palm trees!

We went for a quick snack to Alcove, an outdoor (mostly) cafe with some great cakes.

Eli, that's not how you eat a yogurt!


Family picture! Yes, we are all wearing orange. It was part of my crazy tourist strategy. The fact that it was halloween was a coincidence.

Pictures vs. reality

We went to the canal the other day to feed the ducks.  The weather was not unpleasant and the fall colors are nice, so I took the camera along. 

Fun times, right?  Well, I have a video also, which tells a more complete story. 

Brian was kicking at the birds, I was terrified his crocs were going to go flying into the canal, because this is how he takes them off when he gets home, and Eli was in a tired daze.  He has reached that age where he hates to be in the stroller so I can only get smiles by saying funny things, otherwise he’s not too happy to be there.  I don’t mean to imply we had a bad time, but sometimes I think pictures paint an overly rosy view of things… it’s easy to look at them and think “wow, their life looks so fun!” but pictures are just a split second of time.  Anyway, the contrast with the pictures and video was so funny that I thought I would share.  We did have a good time, mostly.  Aside from the fact that I am always about to have a heart attack… I mean, how hard would it be to have a fence here?  C’mon, Pittsford, you can afford it!

Playing outside

Eli loves to be outside!  We are enjoying the last few days of nice weather before it gets cold here. 

Walking outside from Monica Woodward on Vimeo.

Brian at 3

Brian is talking more and more and he says the funniest things.  I often wish I had a recorder with me all the time because I can never get him to re-create the things he’s doing when I come back with a camera.  A few:

• Eli thinks the word “oops” is really funny so Brian goes around singing “Sally the camel has…. sue whoops!” (sort of a transliteration) and Eli laughs and laughs.  I came over with a camera to tape it and I asked if he would sing Sally the Camel again but he told me, “No, that’s TOO MUCH Sally the Camel.”  Good to know we have limits on that one. 
• He loves to give his teddy a “piggy bank ride”, and he’ll tell me how great piggy bank rides are and no matter how often I repeat it back correctly, he always comes back with the same words. 
• He comes up with the funniest explanations of things, like in one of his more advanced (ahem, perhaps too advanced) books there is an illustration of the water cycle, with a sun that has pointy rays and clouds and rain, and he was telling me how the sun pokes and pokes the clouds with the sharp edges until the water drops come out.  Hahahaha!  As good an explanation as you might expect from the picture, I guess. 
• He is a little know it all; at a playgroup recently he was pointing out a sea turtle to a friend and explaining, “See this?  This is a turtle.  Turtles live in the ocean, that’s why you can’t see them.”  He picks up a toy vulture, “See this?  This is a hawk.”  Um, not quite, buddy.  His little friend could probably school him in all these creatures, but he really likes to go around explaining things.  Outside: “See this?  This is corn and this is the peel.”  My little professor. 
• I was sad when he learned to say Wegmans, instead of Wegums, but he still says restaurant more like resTRAUNK and it has me in stitches every time.  He tells me about how his daddy took him to a resTRAUNK to eat sausage and how great it was.  Always with the sausage, which to my knowledge has never happened but maybe Calvin takes him out for sausage without me….
• Today we were playing on the driveway and it was maybe one of the first times we have had real pretend play, where he told me that we were going to his farm, and we had to park on the grass.  I asked him what he grew, and he said “Ummm, sockets and fresh carrots.  Not a lot.  Just those two things.”  I cannot even guess what sockets are, but there you have it.  We got our sockets and carrots and drove back to his house where he told me he was going to make me a delicious pie, the best pie I ever ate!  Yum, carrot and socket pie!
• He is all sweetness to Eli, often stopping what he is doing to give him a kiss and a hug.  He is even gentle about correcting him, which worried me at first, but when Eli goes to reach for the TV, Brian sets him down carefully on his tushie, over and over.  They really play nicely quite a bit of the time!

Here is our little guy on his first day of school:

He is liking school a lot, although he doesn’t tell me what they do.  “What did you do at school today?”  “Nothing.”  He did tell me they have cars just like his, so I imagine that alone makes him pretty happy.  He is really getting so big!