The Rest of the Disneyland/California Vacation

Tuesday we went to California Adventures at Disneyland with eight children and two adults. The kids were really well behaved--amazingly so. The older kids all took partners and helped with the little kids. I was glad that they allowed my older children to accompany the younger kids on the rides that required small children ride with an adult. Because of that, we were all equally paired up. Poor Giselle was a too small for most of the rides, so I stayed with her and we rode the catepillar ride about thirty-six times. The kids had a fantastic time, but were dead tired at the end. There were very short wait times and the weather was about 70 degrees. I'm not a big amusement park fan because I hate crowds and roller coasters, but all things considering, it turned out to be a perfect experience.

Wednesday, Mom and Tiff took my four little ones so that I could take the three older ones back to Disneyland. Wow, taking three kids out and about is nothing compared to seven. It was like its own mini vacation in the vacation. We had so much fun and I think the kids got to see that their mother really is a fun, happy person afterall. When we got to the park it started drizzling rain, so we stopped by the gift shop and bought hats to keep the rain off our faces. After an hour, it was dumping rain, so we had to buy rain slickers. We were soaked. Riding Thunder Mountain with rain lashing at your face is all the more fun! The best part about the rain was that the place was almost empty and we had little to no wait on any of the rides. Space Mountain was by far our favorite and we did it several times.

One time as we were walking out of Space Mountain, I saw these two guys I thought I knew from somewhere, so I smiled and said hi. As I walked a little further, I realized that I didn't actually know them, but that they were the actors of Merry and Pippen from LOR. Later, we stood in line near them on the race car ride. It was funny to me how many people were trying to sneak pictures in of them. At one point, Oakley wanted a picture of his "driver's license" so I took it and realized I had accidentally angled it toward the actors. The guy that plays Charlie from Lost shot me a dirty look. At first I was mad and wanted to march up to him and say, "Chill out, dude, I don't want pictures of hobbits in my photo album!" (Which I didn't get, you can't see them anyway.) But, then I thought, it must really stink to be famous and not be able to go anywhere or do anything normal in life without throngs of people stealing photographs and gaping at you. That is one lot in life I would not want! I'll stick with being the obscure mother of seven kids.

The next day we just hung out on Laguna Beach in the perfect SoCal spring weather. I will take a day on the beach over Disneyland any day of the week. There is something so emotionally and mentally liberating about the ocean. Maybe it's the limitless expanse of sand and water, or the sounds of the waves crashing that drone out all the chaos of life. Anyway it goes, I could happily live my entire life on the beach. Unfortunately, I don't get any say in where I live. . . but a girl can dream, can't she?

The drive home from California was horrific. I thought we were going to die. The stretch from Newport Beach to St. George was relatively smooth, besides some longer than should be stops. However, right outside of Cedar City we hit a snow storm. My twelve passenger van is rear wheel drive and a nightmare to drive in snow. In places it was almost a complete white out. We crawled along the freeway at about 35 mph. My windshield wipers froze up and I had about a three inch square of visibility through my windshield. (I later found out that the defrost helps with that, but I haven't driven in a snowstorm in over five years, so that thought never occurred to me.) At one point, I was sliding down an icy hill, when a police officer put on his brakes. The moron was driving in the middle of the two lanes. I know that the snow had covered the lines, but the guy couldn't have been that idiotic. Another car in front of me started sliding to the right and I had to choose if I was going to hit the cop or the red car or slide off the road. I couldn't stop and we started fishtailing, at the last second the cop pulled off the highway toward another stranded car, and was able to swerve around the red car and regain control of my vehicle. It was terrifying, especially having seven children in the car with me. We finally made it home after a 16 hour drive. Welcome back to Utah!