Sabbatical Day 36-37

Driving home... Nobody was looking forward to the 18 hour drive home. Everyone wanted to be home and sleep in their own bed. Lesson learned. 37 days is too long for a roadtrip. Some of you tried to tell me that. It was something I had to learn on my own. Keeping a family on the move for that many days is exhausting. Our next vacation will be through an agency and it will require sitting on a beach somewhere and it will most likely just be the two of us :-) Thanks for following the blog! Until our next adventure....

Sabbatical Roadtrip Day 33-35

Disneyland! The Grand Finale! We hit the park running.... We did a couple rides and then got a call from Mom and Dad to meet them at the gate. We took them all over the park and we enjoyed the best of California Adventure & Disneyland. Radiator Springs. Guardians of the galaxy. California Screamin. Toy Story Mania. Splash Mountain. Matterhorn. Thunder Mountain Railroad. Pirates of The Caribbean. Star Tours. Buzz Lightyear. And a Main Street parade. We stopped only briefly for a corn dog and other tasty foods offered in the park. We finished out the day with the World of Color presentation at California Adventure. Disney sure knows how to put on a production! My favorite was probably the Matterhorn. Only because we somehow got Oma to go in the first spot and she screamed the whole time and then got soaked at the end! She was a good sport about it.... but we never did get her to go on it again. Wednesday we started off with California Screamin. Nate convinced me to go in the first car! It was even more scary when you can see the whole coaster in front of you. For all of the tears we experienced over Space Mountain being under maintenance I think Nate might have a new favorite in California Screamin! We also went on Guardians of the galaxy which I was unable to muster the courage for when it was tower of terror. Somehow I thought they made it less scary since there were so many 7 year olds going on it. I got duped! I hate being dropped in an elevator shaft and then going back up to the top floor only to be dropped again. I was glad when it was over and decided once was enough. Over in Disneyland we got on splash Mountain only to get stuck on an incline just before one of the smaller waterfall drops (towards the beginning). The ride attendant had to usher us off the log and gave us passes to come back later when it was up and running again. You start to wonder what exactly was broken and do I really want to try it out again? We moved back over to tommorowland and signed Nate up for Jedi Training. Logan was too shy. Nate loved fighting against Darth Vader although he really wanted to fight the 7th Sister (?) Anybody heard of that character? I guess she is in Rebels. Nate was super excited about it. We finished the evening off with Thunder Mountain. After my birthday breakfast at Panera with Ken we headed over for Magic Morning. It sure is hard to figure out how to spend that Magic hour! We raced into the park with 1,000's of other guests who immediately created long lines on everything cool. So we decided to just enjoy the smaller rides. We got on the Nemo Submarine and then Mr. Toads ride. Snow White's adventure.Peter Pan. Splash Mountain. Jungle Cruise. Thunder Mountain Railroad. We went into toontown to meet up with Mickey Mouse and rode the train around the park. We were definitely feeling the pressure of this being our last day and trying to cram everything in. We had a special meet and great with Star Wars characters (Vader, Bobba Fett, & Chewbacca). Then we hopped over to California Adventure and did California Screamin again and tried one more attempt at Radiator Springs only to find it was down for maintenance. Bummer. All in all it was another busy day! Next time we need to plan a day in between to just rest at the pool.

Sabbatical Roadtrip Day 32

Labor Day! We decided to take a break and just go to the beach. We started to pack things in the car when we notices a little ant "issue" in the hotel parking lot. More on that later.... We had breakfast and then headed to the beach. It was a bit cloudy/overcast which made the beach less populated and we were able to find a spot to park. We built sand castles for awhile and then found a boogie board that we thought we'd give a try. Nate enjoyed it, Logan tried it, and I was glad when it was time to come back in :-) On the drive back to the hotel I started to notice ants in the car. We squished one, and then another by the time we arrived at the hotel I realized this was actually a bigger issue that wasn't going away. I spent the next hour or so pulling the car apart and checking our food bin for ants (thankfully they didn't get in there!). Once I was satisfied we got them all out of the car we headed to dinner in downtown Disney. We had a fantastic dinner at the rainforest café and enjoyed walking around checking out the shops. As we got back to the car we noticed there were still lots of ants and decided to go to Home Depot to get some assistance with our issue. We think they will be gone if we leave the bait out all night! Please note: There were also many, many tears today over the fact that Space Mountain at Disneyland is under refurbishment and will not be on the agenda for the next few days. Disneyland can expect a strong statement from a certain 8 year old who thinks that Space Mountain is the only reason someone would go to Disneyland and should not ever be taken offline for more than 24 hours. Sigh. I think the effects of such a long road trip are setting in. We've become irrational! Hoping a good nights rest will help us all :-)

Sabbatical Roadtrip Day 31

We got an early start in the morning to visit the Hoover Dam. It was amazing to see. We didn't make the time for a tour, because we had scheduled a dinner in California. The drive took a little longer than expected due to traffic, but we were able to check into our hotel and then walk across the street for the Medieval Times Jousting Banquet. The boys were mesmerized. The jousting, the combat, they loved it! We were served a half a chicken, corn, and baked potato and NO silverware! It was a bit messy and very tasty!