Family Game Night with the Frazers. We have our neighborhood friends the Frazers over for pizza and games. Angela, Megan, and the girls start playing “Settlers of Catan” before dinner, then resume playing afterwards. Angela wins! Most of the girls are getting tired, so we call it a night. Kaila and Anya are unhappy we didn’t get to play all the other games we’d planned to play. Jan points out that it’s “Game (singular) Night”, not “Games Night”, so we only get to play one game.
It’s sunny in the early afternoon, so Angela takes all three girls to the park. It gets cooler, then clouds over, then starts to drizzle, then really rain, then a bit of hail, and finally a pounding, deafening hailstorm. Everyone seeks shelter under a big slide. Bree wails that she wants to go home. Jan calls to see if they’re okay, and then drives around to pick them up. Drying off back at home, everyone gets hot cocoa and snuggles in blankets to watch a movie.
Anya and Liya gather every blanket, towel, pillow, and stuffed animal in the house to make an enormous pile of soft stuff. It’s easily 1 1/2 feet tall.
The girls engage in projects regularly. It always takes hours of haranguing to get them to put everything away.
Anya illustrates and binds her own catalog of dress designs. Jan’s favorite feature is the tear-out subscription card.
The girls really enjoy watching our DVDs of the BBC nature series, “Planet Earth”. One of the favorite segments is on birds-of-paradise from New Guinea, in which bizarrely-plumed male birds do a funny hopping dance around nonplussed females.
Seeing an different sort of educational opportunity, Jan asks the girls what sort of display a human male might make to attract a human female. Liya replies, “Now a guy just says something like, ‘I invented the iPhone!’”
Disneyland! The girls start their spring break today, and it’s off to Anaheim for a long weekend. Our heads must not have been completely attached today. We’d meant to bring a stroller with us for Bree, but forgot it until we were already halfway to the airport. At the airport, Angela discovers she forgot her driver’s license at home. (The TSA agent toys with us for a bit, then lets her through.) And when we finally arrive at the hotel, Jan discovers that the big Disneyland envelope he brought was not the one with the tickets and everything, just a bunch of maps, vouchers, and random marketing goop. Oh, well. The girls themselves do great on the trip. Best part of the day is watching fireworks from the hotel room. Since the summer sun sets so late in Seattle, Bree’s never had a chance to see fireworks before!
Disneyland, Day 1. Typical start to a Disney day: At 8:00 am, we walk up to the hotel’s character-themed restaurant for breakfast, and are informed that the first available table is at 11:30 am. The restaurant 10 feet away that is not character-themed is completely open, and we’re served immediately. (We’ll see plenty of Disney characters shortly.)
We take the monorail to Tomorrowland, and the tour begins: Finding Nemo submarines, Autopia cars (Anya drives a car with Angela, Liya drives a car with Jan and Bree), Jedi training something, It’s a Small World After All, Princess Fantasy Faire (including story time with Snow White), Cinderella something, Tarzan’s Treehouse, and Big Mountain Thunder Railroad. Anya sums up the latter roller coaster: “At first I thought it was scary, and then afterwards I realized it was fun.”
We’re wiped by 3:00 and head back to the hotel. We’re somewhat amazed that Bree has walked on her own most of the day without asking to be carried. Angela flops on a bed and passes out, Jan takes the girls swimming at the Neverland swimming pool. We all head out at dinner time to meet up at the Cheesecake Factory with Angela’s family, who have driven down from Rancho Palos Verdes. Jan and Johnny agree to split a pasta entrée, and when the waiter sets down a full plate in front of Jan, Jan wonders why the kitchen didn’t split it as requested—then Jan realizes that they did split it. We do some shopping at the Lego store after dinner, then everyone comes back to the hotel to watch the nightly fireworks show from our balcony. The girls all drop at 10:00 pm.
Disneyland, Day 2. With reservations in hand, we head back to Goofy’s Kitchen, the hotel’s character-themed restaurant. Bree is somewhat terrified of the giant Goofy that greets us and stands by us for a picture. The girls are thrilled to discover the buffet includes items outside the bounds of a normal breakfast, like pizza and gummi worms. Another monorail trip to Disneyland (along with another round of squabbling over who gets to sit in a one particular seat that seems exactly like the one next to it). First stop of the day is the Matterhorn “bobsled” roller coaster. We then split up, and Angela takes Bree to It’s a Small World After All again. (Each will later say independently that their favorite part of the day was going on that ride.) Jan takes Anya and Liya to Toontown for the spinning taxi ride. Angela and Bree do Flying Dumbos; Jan and the older two do the carousel. Lunch is at the ranch barbecue, where Jan is sorely disappointed to learn they don’t have turkey legs on offer.
After lunch, Angela takes Bree back to the hotel for a nap (which she doesn’t actually take), while Jan takes Anya and Liya to Tom Sawyer’s Island. At the top of the treehouse there, we spend a while looking for a hidden mickey—our “Hidden Mickeys” guide says we’re supposed to be able to see one from the treehouse. Jan and Liya can’t see anything, but Anya manages to spot a hidden Mickey Mouse on top of a nearby building, where it can only be spotted from the treehouse. We have a great time exploring the various caves, especially cramped dark passages that look like they don’t go anywhere—but then do. After that: ice cream on a park bench in New Orleans, Enchanted Tiki Room, Jungle Cruise, and then back to Main Street to meet Angela and Bree. We buy snacks. We’re sitting outside on a curb eating the snacks, when a Disney cast member asks us if we’re waiting for the parade. “No… when does it start?” we ask. The cast member replies, “In a few weeks.”
We take the railroad all the way around the park, then walk back to the hotel. More pool time, which the girls can’t get enough of. Dinner at a hotel restaurant, then fireworks and bed.
Disneyland, Day Three. We start the day by getting FastPass tickets to Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, then go to Pirates of the Caribbean. We’re not sure how Bree will do in the ride, but we figure we’ll give it a try. She finds certain parts of the ride scary, especially times when it’s pitch dark and there are spooky noises. Overall she does pretty well. Meanwhile, Angela’s happy to spot a hidden Mickey formed out of cannonball divots on the side of a wall.
We still have time before the Forbidden Eye ride, so we go to the Haunted Mansion. Our plan is to “switch off”: a brilliant yet under-advertised service that Disney offers to parents with little kids. A pair of adults can take a little kid, even those under the height restriction, all the way to the head of any line and then “switch off”. In our case, it works like this: Angela goes through the ride with Liya, while Jan waits right by the ride’s loading area with the Bree and Anya; when Angela returns, Jan hands off Bree, and then goes on the ride with Anya. This way the whole family can go through the line together and at the same time.
This “switch off” scheme worked great on the Matterhorn roller coaster, for example. On the Haunted Mansion, however, it leads to disaster. We get all the way into the mansion and into a big room—and then they close the doors before we have a chance to tell them we want to switch off. So now Bree’s coming with us into the Haunted Mansion. It’s hard to think of a ride Bree could actually go on in this park which Bree would have wanted to go on less than the Haunted Mansion. She doesn’t scream or cry, but she is not happy about this turn of events. After the doors shut, a booming ghostly baritone voice begins to mock all of us and tell us how we’re all going to die horribly, which makes Bree even less happy about things. Angela suggests Bree close her eyes, which she does. This helps. We finally make it on to the ride proper. Bree spends the entire ride in Jan’s lap, most of the time burying her head in Jan’s chest, until it’s finally over. She’s relieved to exit the Haunted Mansion. On the plus side, Bree now claims that, by comparison, the Pirates ride wasn’t so scary after all.
We make it to the Forbidden Eye ride, and switch off there (the right way this time). Jan takes Anya, who really doesn’t like the thrashing car ride; she spends most of the ride with her head down, failing to notice when a huge serpent head appears at her side. Angela takes Liya, who likes the ride fine, although (like Anya) she knows nothing about the Indiana Jones movies. When the famous giant rolling rock ball appears and begins rolling toward the car, Liya wonders why they have a big “moon” in the middle of the ride.
We split up after lunch. Anya and Liya are determined to ride on Space Mountain, the only roller coaster in the park they haven’t ridden yet. There’s a long wait, but they’re committed to it; afterwards, they both give the ride a thumbs-up. Liya, who’s wearing shoes with built-in LEDs, says that during the ride, “My shoes were blinking like crazy!”
Angela, meanwhile, fulfills her promise to Bree to visit the new Rapunzel tower in Fantasyland so that Bree can finally meet Rapunzel. The wait is over an hour, but Bree is excited and holds herself together. She is very happy when she gets to meet Rapunzel—who, it must be said, spends a good deal of time talking with Bree. Afterwards Bree insists on waiting in yet another line to meet Cinderella—her favorite princess—although this time Bree’s a bit shy. In the gift shop, Angela gets Bree a purple Rapunzel dress that Bree wears for the rest of the day.
We reunite, and Jan takes Bree on her third ride through It’s a Small World in three days. We finish up on Main Street with lots of popcorn and candy. Back to hotel. Pool, dinner, fireworks. Anya and Liya are already in bed when the fireworks start, but come running out of their bedroom after the first boom.
At one of the neighborhood’s pocket beaches, Bree and Jan build the USS Vanilla Latte. Bree would rather take it home than launch it.
If you ask Bree her age these days, you will receive the answer, “Three and three-quarters”.
Our thirteenth anniversary was Monday, but Angela had to T.A. a class that night, so tonight we go out to celebrate with a long, leisurely dinner at Rover’s.