The Plague

My children have been hit with sickness again. I've diagnosed it as viral tonsillitis. We're waiting for the lab results (which should have come today) to rule out strep throat completely. Cute Girl is going on a week of sore throat; Handsome Face is behind by a few days.

My boy is great. You can't even tell that he's sick other than the fact that he constantly clamors for all of the sick bed treats. I asked him this morning if his throat hurt and he replied, "My throat not hurt. My throat fine." I love that kid.

Cute Girl is completely different. While most of the time she is content to just quietly lay on some flat surface, she also refuses any of the home treatments that would help her. She's just miserable. Her tonsils are so swollen and covered in grossness that I can't even see the back of her throat. I had to call my paramedic father at eleven at night just to make sure her airway wouldn't close. I wasn't going to sleep otherwise. That girl won't drink anything, won't eat anything, won't take her Tylenol, and just generally tries to thwart me.

I can't wait for this to be over. I'm sick of listening to PBS cartoons all day long and being quarantined to my house. I will be overjoyed to put away all of the thermometers, sippy cups, essential oils, Tylenol bottles, flashlights, and tongue depressors that litter my house. I can't wait until all of the lemonade, Kool-Aid, root beer, popsicles, and ice cream (that are supposed to be enticing Cute Girl but are really just making Handsome Face a glutton) are gone.

The Cardinals Won!

Although neither team played very well. We went to a Diamondbacks and Cardinals game a few weeks ago. The Rocket Scientist had a great time but I think we won't be taking the kids back anytime soon.

Looking down into the Diamondbacks' bull pen.

We saw the fireworks on the way back to our car which was fun. I think my favorite part was the Hilton hotel suite. The kids enjoyed the pool and luckily we were the only one's in it the next morning. Ours were the smallest children I saw in the hotel all weekend. The RS kept being vexed at how little our children ate at restaurants but of course at the hotel breakfast buffet where they were free they ate like champs. Go figure.

A few weeks ago the whole family sat down and made playdough. We had a lot of fun. The recipe came from Jill at homemade by jill and was featured on Skip to My Lou.

Disneyland: Day 3

The Rocket Scientist calls this a failure. He was greatly amused.

My kids watching the Disney Channel while we get ready to hit the park.

Meeting Mickey Mouse!

On the way home and totally worn out

And my mother-in-law must have all of the other pictures because I'm out. But the rest of the trip was just more of the same as far as pictures are concerned.
On Wednesday Karen took the kids and treated my husband and I to lunch at Club 33. It was so much fun but of course none of the pictures turned out very well. We got to see lots of shows including Playhouse Disney and Aladdin. Friday night we stayed late for Fantasmic and the fireworks. Splash Mountain was finally open that day and the Rocket Scientist and Cute Girl got stuck on it when it broke down right after they got on. But luckily Cute Girl had already ridden it with me. She loved it in the end but when we were going up for our big plummet I was warning her that it was coming and she buried her head in my shoulder crying, "I'm not ready! I'm not ready!" So funny and she loved it in the end.
Oh, and earlier in the day we treated ourselves to some beignets in Downtown Disney. So very worth the (affordable) splurge.

Disney: Day 2

You can't see us but Cute Girl and I are on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. She loved, loved, loved this ride. Handsome Face was dieing to get on it but he just wasn't tall enough. Poor kid. We used Fast Passes and did a Child Swap to get on this ride. The line is always long.

The Caboose on the Casey Jr. Circus Train!

Handsome Face and I on Dumbo again

I think on this day the kids and I went home for naps. Then when Dad and Grandma got back we went swimming. It was so funny to watch Handsome Face at the pool. He was adamant that he was not putting his suit on or going swimming. But once we got there he looked really sad. He finally agreed to take off his jeans and put his feet in the hot tub. Then after awhile he started completely stripping! We ran upstairs real fast and got him all changed and I think he had fun despite the cold.

Right now each of my children has a butter knife and a flashlight. And they're singing made-up, gibberish songs. I've no idea what this game is.

Disney: Day 1

Since it was our first day there and the kids had never been before, we hit Disneyland right as it was opening and spent all day there. It was a blast! We visited Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. A horrible shot of the teacups by the Rocket Scientist. The teacups were actually quite fun.

A word to the wise, if you want to do Fantasyland (especially Dumbo) go there first thing. The lines can get really long. If you enter the park before opening time, you can hop on the very first train out of Main Street and take it around to the Toon Town station. It'll save a bit of time and walking. But if you miss the first train, don't bother. It'll be faster to just walk. Oh, and the Peter Pan ride always has a ridiculous line too so hit that and Dumbo first. You can also get off the train and do Toon Town first. It's at the very back of the park and takes a long time to get crowded. There are only two real rides there though.

The Casey Jr. Circus train. The kids loved this, and honestly, so did I. It's one of my favorite rides in Fantasyland. And we got to ride in the Animal Cage! Only thing cooler would have been the monkey cage but someone beat us to it. Later in the week the kids and Grandma got the caboose. That's cool too.

This is the Astro Orbiter, or rocket ships as we call them. I lost count of how many times we rode this thing by the end of the week. It was one of Handsome Face's favorites. It's the same concept as Dumbo only bigger.

We also rode Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. This also topped Handsome Face's list of best rides (along with Dumbo and the carousels). He always wanted to go "ride rockets and shoot robots." We did a child swap with Handsome Face so the rest of us could ride Space Mountain. This was the most difficult ride/wait of the day as the ride broke down while they were waiting in line and HF and I were at the exit waiting for them to come out. But finally we got on. Cute Girl loved it! She went back on with me as my child swap partner and as we were going she laughed, "Mommy, this is too much fun!" She rode it three times by the end of the week but that was finally enough for her.

We took Handsome Face on the Matterhorn twice as it's the only "roller coaster" he could go on and we all like it. He didn't so much. After the second time with Daddy he was adamant that he was never going on the scary mountain with the scary monsters again. But then he became obsessed with it for the rest of the week and talked about the scary mountain constantly.

Have you seen this?

Skip to my Lou Craft Camp

Our June just got a whole lot more fun.

Oh, and I almost forgot...

We just got back from Disneyland. Oh, it was lovely. And my family even put up with my occasional crankiness.
Lots of posts on Disneyland to come, but if you're thinking of heading there anytime soon, here's my personal take on how to do a Disneyland vacation.

1- I would NEVER take a child under two to Disneyland. They're just too little to enjoy it and it's going to throw off their schedule. And personally, when my babies are cranky, I'm cranky and so I wouldn't have any fun anyway.
And a side note regarding babies - the Rocket Scientist was talking to one of the cast members and this gentlemen remarked that were it not for strollers and wheelchairs, the lines would never stop. Transferring people is what takes so long and makes the lines stop and really long. Not that he implied that strollers and wheelchairs aren't welcome, it was just an observation.
2- Which brings me to my second point. I would NEVER take a stroller to Disneyland. They honestly just get in the way. We brought ours but only used it the last four or five hours we were in the park on the very last day. It was awful. You have to drop it off at every ride, then fight the crowd to get it back. And you travel much faster through the crowds without it. Yes, you do end up carrying a lot of tired children, but we really preferred that to trying to get the stupid stroller down Main Street in the crowd.
3- Go in the off season. We went the last week of May when our school was out but summer season technically hadn't started yet. We didn't see any real crowds until Friday and most of our waits were less than 20 minutes. The longest was 30.
4- I'd love to stay in a Disney hotel sometime but we used Priceline to find a cheap rate on a hotel directly across the street from the entrance. SOOOOOO good. Even if you're hotel is only half a mile away, you're really going to hate it when you're tired and walking home at 10pm. And find one with free breakfast and free parking. Our breakfast was REALLY basic but I knew that going in and all I really wanted was to be able to feed my children as soon as they woke up and as quickly as possible. We needed to maximize our sleep time and our park time and we didn't want to waste an hour or two at Denny's.
5- Take food on your trip. We packed food for lunch and dinners and some breakfast supplements. We took lunch into the park (sandwiches and such) several days and came back to eat dinner in our hotel room. The room had a fridge and microwave (a MUST). I brought canned fruit and veggies, salad fixings, and things like instant mac & cheese, hot dogs, and frozen chicken cordon bleu that could be heated in the microwave. We never eat this kind of stuff so my kids thought it was great. And I actually preferred the dinners in the room to the ones we ate out (we had planned dinners out for several nights but only went once because we liked not going out better). My kids ate better and we got a lot more fruits and vegetables that way.
6- Take another adult with you. Even with only two kids, we never would have survived the week without my sweet mother-in-law there. Karen helped carry kids, take them to the bathroom, stayed in the room with them during naps, helped chaperon small children onto rides, bought them treats, took our pictures... Seriously though, if you have at least one small child who can't go on a lot of the bigger rides, it's much easier to do if there's more than just the parents there to help.

So there you have it. That's how I like my Disneyland vacation to go. I'm sure there's lots of ways that other people like to do things that work just as well for them. So, what are all of your Disney-ing tricks?

Summer Fun

My children and I checked out Heat Wave by Eileen Spinelli this week from the library. It tells the story of a quiet, sleepy little town called Lumberville during the forties or fifties. Lumberville is hit by the summer sun and almost everything comes to a stop. The people of Lumberville play in hoses, sell lemonade, lay on cold linoleum to listen to the radio, and nap on park benches.
It's a pleasant story and it made me wishful for those more simple times. I live in one of the hottest places in the country and the only thing that closes come summertime is the golf course.
I miss summer at home in Indiana. You can't sit on porch swings and talk with the neighbors here.
I have been busy planning the rest of our summer activities this week. As I've picked out the best pool days and found the library story time schedule, I keep thinking back to my own childhood summers and I want so badly to recreate those summers for my own children. I lived outside during the summer (actually I was banned from the house). My siblings and I were either on the swings or crawling around in the field of weeds, making tunnels. We lived off of Popsicles and Schwans ice cream cups. I mowed in my bathing suit and hung laundry on the line. And now, looking back, I even miss picking all those acres of strawberries and selling them by the roadside.
But we can't do any of that here. If you're not in the pool you can't go outside because you're skin will burn - not from the sun, from the heat. And we don't have fields, or woods, or running water. Kids can't sell lemonade because there's no one outside to sell it to.
But we're going to try to make it a simple, fun summer. I bought extra ice cream treats today and we're already thinking about our Fourth of July decorations. Now if only I could get some fireflies to migrate west or a river to divert its course...
So, how about you? Are you looking forward to summer? Is it going to be anything like your childhood? Or is it just crazy busy and over-planned like everything else seems to be in this world?