Disneyland Notes

Slipshod and I have come up with some fantastic ideas for Disneyland:

1) (mine) - When a guest enters the park they should be handed a temporary tattoo of the Disneyland park map.
We had at least two maps with our group at all times but were constantly searching our bags for them.
2) (Slipshod's) - Strollers at Disneyland should have a park map attached to them (really, how hard would that be?) OR, his preference, a GPS.

Our visit to Disneyland and California Adventure was fantastic. We had tons of fun every day we went and it was so nice to be in a place where so many of the rides do not have a height limit. Neither of the girls liked Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because of the hell scene at the end (if I had remembered that part of the ride I never would have taken them in), but The Bug still agreed to pose for a picture in the car outside.


Thanks to Boopa, Sweet Pea became obsessed with finding as many "hidden Mickeys" as possible, though when you only go on rides in a couple parts of the park, you're not going to be in the right places to see most of them. Thanks to the book (yes, we cheated), she and I did find a hidden Mickey in the Sun Fountain Plaza in California Adventure.

I really liked the fantastically decorated Christmas trees in Toon Town. Most of the ornaments were bigger than my head!

Monday night Slipshod and I went to dinner by ourselves at the Blue Bayou restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The girls stayed with their grandparents and since we had to run to get to the restaurant on time as soon as we got off the tram after returning to the park after naptime, The Bug cried hard and was completely miserable as we ran off after hugging her and Sweet Pea goodbye. Grandma figured she'd introduce The Bug, age 2, to SHOPPING THERAPY. Thanks so much, Grandma. The Bug was not the least bit swayed until she saw a certain pair of shoes. The rest of the evening she was completely fine.

We had a really fun time seeing our So. Cal. - dwelling friends; two families at the parks on Saturday and one family at their home on Sunday (when we also visited the Griffith Observatory, which Sweet Pea and her grandpa really really enjoyed - grandpa even said that the planetarium show there was the best he's ever seen, and he's seen a lot of 'em so that's high praise).

Unfortunately, The Bug never got comfortable with all the change on our trip, and now that we're home she's having trouble settling back in too. She is grumpy often these days, which is not normal for her, and I feel pretty awful when she gets really upset because I know she's probably just discombobulated and there's nothing that'll fix that but time. We're back on our usual routine as of today but one day isn't going to settle her in so she was still very out of sorts tonight and bedtime was a horror which resulted in The Bug screaming herself to sleep in the guest room and Slipshod accidentally falling asleep with Sweet Pea, who didn't want to be alone after The Bug was evicted from their room for the night. Normally I probably would have snuggled The Bug to sleep but for some reason tonight I just wanted to get out of there and I couldn't get her to settle down so as I walked down the stairs she opened their bedroom door (a new skill she seems to have only in times of extreme unhappiness) and screamed her head off. Slipshod took over from there.

Really the trip went very well over all, but I feel like next time we do this The Bug will probably be old enough to take all the change more in stride. And not nearly break her mother by wanting to be carried through Disneyland all day long.

My apologies if any of these sentences do not make sense; all I want to do is escape into a TV show right now, but I wanted to post a few pictures and a little rundown of our trip. Slipshod took most of the photos on the trip and I haven't even seen most of them yet, so there will be more later when he gets 'em all downloaded! :o)