Trip to Disneyland

Nate here. The first week in January, my folks took our family to Disneyland. Talk about generosity. For several weeks before the trip, Michelle would wake up screaming from nightmares about the 12-hour car ride, with her pillow torn in half or clumps of my hair in her clenched fists, but the trip down actually went really well. It helped to break it into two days, with stops in St. George between.

Add with his grandpa and great-grandpa, poring over a construction project.

And it also helped to drive in two cars, with Addison in with Grandma and Grandpa. Add did great (I think Gma and Gpa put "Cars" on repeat on their DVD player), and Bryn did good too, probably because she was enthralled by such wonders as The World's Largest Thermometer (broken) and Zzyzx Road - and the Oreos didn't hurt.

Here's the whole group taking the obligatory photo. On the left are my aunt Deb and uncle Mike. They are always game for a trip to Disneyland and they know how to party - me and Michelle went home exhausted hours before they did. Besides my folks, my sister Abbey also came.

They still had Christmas up the first night we were there.

And it got pretty cold at night - if high 40s can be considered cold.

Add had a great time meeting some of his favorite cartoons.

Mater and Lightning McQueen

Eeyore. He pretty much insisted we get in line to meet Pooh & co.

And of course, Bob's Big Boy. Wait, what?

Of all the multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art, once-in-a-lifetime rides, Addison and Bryn (and Michelle) would have been thrilled to just ride the carousels all day. In fact, they did.

(along with trying to get that sword out)

Other kid favorites:

Dumbo

I'm only screaming because Abbey's driving.

Bumper cars.

Winnie the Pooh. Grandpa was in fine form with his Pooh/poo jokes.

Mercifully, I will now stop commenting and just post pictures for awhile.

Waiting to go on the Tower of Terror. Despite my cool and calm appearance, I'm utterly terrified at this point, and moments later, I wished we'd brought a change of clothes for me too, not just Addison.

See?

With no table in our hotel room, we had fancy picnic dinners on the floor.

Thursday everyone stayed at Disneyland while I went to a conference for school at the ridiculously upscale Marriott/Ritz Carlton hotel in downtown LA. It was informative, but also a little silly. Thousands of English professors and grad students pretending they live this lifestyle all the time and trying to act more sophisticated than everyone else. On Friday, we drove along the coast (except when a certain driver in the other car was slavishly obedient to his GPS and led us inland), stopped at Huntington Beach for awhile, and spent the night in Newport Beach.

On the way out of town, my car took an not-entirely-intended detour and ended up at the Newport Beach temple. We were glad we did.