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Today we did our first day at Disneyland. For me the fun of Disneyland starts with watching the excitement of the kids as we pull into the parking garage. They get increasingly excited as we board the tram and go in the front entrance. No matter how many times you’ve been to Disneyland, it’s always fun to go through the front entrance and walk into Main Street USA.

The classic entrance photo. Notice that mickey is wearing a mask for Halloween

We were hopeful that the park wouldn’t be too crowded in the middle of the week and while it was more crowded than our last trip, the longest wait for any ride was 30 minutes and we just used Fastpass for those rides. One thing that was new this year was a Finding Nemo ride (the old submarine ride that they shut down for a number of years and only recently brought back). I wanted to go on the submarine ride but there was never a wait under 30 minutes and it doesn’t have a fastpass. Oh well, we’ll get to it one of the next two days.

My one and only chance for a classic Mickey picture and I manage to make it blurry

We first went to Mickey’s Toontown where we rode on the Cartoon Adventure ride (can’t remember it’s real name), the Goofy Rollercoaster, and waited in a long line to take a picture with Mickey. After Toontown Samuel and I decided to ride the Matterhorn while the rest of the family went to ride the cars at Autopia. It turns out that Samuel is my best roller-coaster partner. He was always up for any of the roller-coaster/action/adventure type rides while his sisters often (and his mother always) wussed out. Caroline turned out to be a pretty good roller coaster rider once Samuel went on it first and convinced Caroline that it was fun. Diana wasn’t tall enough go on any roller coasters and seemed content just to hang out in her stroller and wait with Nancy.

Samuel about to board the Matterhorn bobsleds

Diana’s favorite ride was the Alice in Wonderland teacups. I don’t mind going on that ride but I have a strict “no spinning” policy because I don’t want to get seasick. Diana’s second favorite ride was the carousel and she also liked the Dumbo flying elephant ride.

Emily and Anne of course enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean. So did Nancy and Samuel. Nancy and the girls also went on Indiana Jones while I took Samuel and Diana on the Jungle Cruise and the Tarzan Treehouse because they were too short to go on Indiana Jones (not that Diana would have gone anyway). It’s interesting to see how Disney is rebranding various attractions to be more in line with their newer movies. Pirates of the Caribbean now features a Johnny Depp look-alike as Captain Jack Sparrow. The submarine ride is now Finding Nemo and features scenes from the movie. The old Swiss Family Robinson treehouse is now Tarzan’s treehouse.

Samuel and Diana in Tarzan’s treehouse

For lunch I hoofed it to the car and brought back our picnic we had packed in a cooler. There is a little picnic area just outside of the entrance to the parks that also has lockers where you can store your coolers. After lunch we headed back to the park for the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Winnie the Pooh, and Big Thunder Railroad. By the end of the day we had gone on every ride except Finding Nemo and so the rest of the day was devoted to “seconds” – going on each person’s favorite rides. That included the carousel, teacups, and Dumbo for Diana. Pirates for Nancy and Samuel, and Autopia for the girls.

At the end of the day Nancy and I were both tired and ready to head home so we decided to postpone the parade until the next day. As we went back to the picnic area to pick up our cooler, Emily zigged while the rest of zagged and we got separated. Nancy had already taken Diana to the car so I was stuck with Anne, Caroline, and Samuel while looking for a lost Emily. At first I thought she had followed the crowd streaming out of the park towards the main exit so I went looking in that direction but couldn’t find her. I finally got worried enough that I contact park security who put out an APB on her. We thought she might have boarded the wrong tram for the parking place so they had the tram drivers on the lookout for her. The security people asked me if Emily would have gone back to the car on her own. I didn’t think that was likely because the tram for our car was on the opposite side of the park from where she got lost. After about 20 minutes of looking I got a call from Nancy (who was still waiting at the car) that she thought she saw Emily riding on one of the trams. It turns out that Emily had indeed made it across the park on her own and got on the right tram and headed back to the car once she realized she was lost. It reminded me a lot of the time I got lost in NYC when I was exactly Emily’s age. Nothing is worse than the sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’ve lost a kid. I’m glad that Emily was level headed enough to work her way back to the car so our day at Disneyland could have a happy ending.

We considered going to Disneyland today but it was going to be hot so we decided to make today our day for going to the Getty Museum and the beach. The Getty Center (I think it’s officially known as “The Getty”) was about an hour away. We figured it would be a fairly small art museum and the kids wouldn’t last too long. When we got there, we were amazed. If I could describe The Getty in three words they would be “un buh lievable”. The Getty is built on top of a steep hillside. When you drive in you enter a parking garage built into the hill. It is about 7 levels deep so it must have been a massive excavation project to build that thing. You then board a tram that takes you to the top of the hill where the museum and gardens are.

Boarding the tram at “The Getty”

Riding the tram

The museum has several different galleries of both modern and classical European art. We saw paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, Reubens, and Van Dyck. My favorite was a portrait by Van Dyck. It was enormous and the red robe just looked spectacular on the museum wall (you’ll have to follow the link. The Getty doesn’t allow me to download their graphic for use on a personal website although I could theoretically make a “Fair Use” copyright claim.)

Making masks in the activity center

There was also a fun little “family center” where the kids did art related activities. One of the galleries was a “sketch gallery” where they set you up with an artists sketch pad and you could sketch one of the various paintings or busts in the gallery. Anne signed up to sketch a bust. Nancy stayed with her while I took the other kids to look at more paintings.

Touring the grounds

The kids were as good as gold although as the day wore on they became increasingly more wiggly. Nancy and Anne wanted to continue looking at art (they didn’t spend as much time the galleries as the other kids and I did because they were busy in the sketch gallery) so I took the remaining kids on a tour of the grounds. The grounds are as spectacular as the art – high on the hill you could view the entire Los Angeles valley along with the ocean. The smoky haze wasn’t as bad today as yesterday and the view was wonderful. The grounds are also peppered with various sculptures and other pieces of art.

After spending several hours and only seeing a fraction of the galleries we boarded the tram back to the parking garage and headed back to the hotel for lunch. I would highly recommend visting The Getty the next time you are in Los Angeles. If you’re not dragging kids around, you could easily spend a full day in the center and touring the grounds. You definitely want to go on a good weather day because it probably wouldn’t be any fun on the grounds in the rain. If you do have kids then The Getty’s various kid activities are great but you the kids will still likely last only a couple of hours. Hopefully Nancy and I can come back some day without kids and spend a full day. We would’ve liked to go see the Getty Villas in Malibu but you need to schedule in advance for a ticket and with the fires near/in Malibu we figured it would have to wait for another trip.

After lunch we got packed up and headed to the beach. The hotel had beach towels and beach equipment (chairs, toys, etc.) for use so we loaded up on gear and drove the short drive (basically across the street although it was too far for Diana to walk) to Crystal Cove State Park. The weather was nice and warm and we plopped our gear down in the sand and headed for the water with plans to frolick the afternoon away in the waves.

The second we put our toes in the water all plans of frolicking came to a grinding halt – the water was freezing cold. We spent an hour chasing waves and finding seashells until everyone was cold and sandy enough (too cold to get in the water and wash off the sand) to call it a day. After trying to rinse the sand off the best we could at the public restroom, we turned tail and headed for the balmy waters of the hotel pool and hottub where we played until the sun went down.

Hot-tubbing it

The wildfire smoke makes for a nice sunset

The least crowded days at Disneyland are supposed to be Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so we figured we would spend the first full day of our vacation just relaxing. The plan for this morning was to sleep in, hang out, and go swimming. The reality was fairly close to the plan with the exception that the kids were knocking on our door at 6:30 a.m. wanting breakfast — so much for sleeping in.

A smoky sky

After breakfast we went to the pool but the water was chilly and the wind was blowing soot and ashes all over the place so we only lasted about 30 minutes in the pool before we gave up. We went back to the hotel room and hung out and watched TV until it was lunch time. After lunch the weather looked a little better outside so we went on an exploring trip around the hotel. We found a fish pond, a fountain, and a neat little playground with a sandbox, tetherball, basketball, and a putting green.

After our little exploring tour we had worked up a sweat so we decided to try the pool again. This time the water was warmer (the pool is supposed to be heated) and the wind wasn’t blowing so we stayed for several hours (except Nancy who thought the air was too smoky so she went back to the hotel room to hang out). All in all it was a relaxing vacation day.

I look like Igor in the picture because I don’t have my glasses on and am squinting at the camera

Today we set off on a weeklong vacation in California. Our first suprise was finding an inch of snow on the ground as we pulled out of the driveway. Our second surprise was driving down the street behind our house and noticing that someone had left the kids’ bathroom light on. After turning around to turn off the light, we began the long drive to Southern California in earnest.

When we woke up this morning to an inch of snow on the ground, the warm winds of Southern California seemed welcome. When we got stuck in traffic on I-15 because of the Southern California fires, the warm Santa Anna winds didn’t seem so great after all. We finally arrived at our hotel in Newport after passing flames along the freeway. The sky was black with smoke and the entire state smells like a campfire but we are just glad to be done driving and glad that the hotel isn’t in the fire zone.

The kids did pretty good in the car on the way down. The worst part was being stuck in traffic for most of the afternoon. The best part was the first time a kid asked “are we there yet?” – Samuel won the prize for asking that question just before we got to Provo (about 20 minutes after we left).

Tomorrow the plan is to sleep in, hang out, go swimming, and generally just relax. We’ll also be at Disneyland for a couple of days this week. We’re hopeful that the smoke and heat will die down a bit towards the end of the week.

Tonight we celebrated Nancy’s birthday by going on a date to the Market Street Grill and leaving the kids at home. We’re glad that a Market Street Grill opened up in South Jordan. In fact, we rarely go to a downtown restaurant these days (sushi being a notable exception – we haven’t found a good sushi place on the south end of the valley yet). The only problem with going to Market Street was the fact that Bingham high was playing a home football game tonight (Thursday – likely because of the deer hunt starting this Saturday) so traffic on 104th south was a nightmare.

After dinner we had cake and ice cream at home. Notice that the number of candle’s on Nancy’s birthday have nothing to do with her age (if you were thinking 34 because of the 4 candles you would be wrong – she’s definitely older than 34).

My kids still love to go and play with their friends from the old neighborhood. Today my friend Lynette called up and wanted to know if my kids wanted go to the corn maze with her kids. I thought the kids would love it, not for just the maze, but because they could play with their friends. They all had a fun time, however at the end of the maze the kids wanted to go to the haunted part, but I didn’t buy the tickets. By the time we got done with the regular maze the line to buy tickets for the haunted part was very long and I didn’t want to wait that long so I told the kids it was time to go home. They weren’t too happy with me, but oh well!

Driving home from work tonight I spied a bumper sticker that said,

“If animals could talk we would all be vegetarians”

Could that bumper sticker be any stupider?

If you don’t think it’s a stupid sentiment, consider the following:

If plants could talk we would all be…

Well, we would probably all be dead. A world with talking plants is just as arbitrarily impossible and stupid as a world with talking animals – one is equally as likely to happen as the other. I guess logic just doesn’t play a big role in the life of your average nutjob.

This stupid bumper sticker brought to mind one of my favorite Dilbert comic strips where Bob the Dinosaur comes up with solutions to problems, such as:

If people are starving in Africa they should move to France!

Check out the new comment I got in the post about our couch: New Furniture.

My thoughts on this were:
1. I like the couch
2. It’s good to get unbiased feedback even if the opinion expressed is different than my own.
3. The commentor doesn’t really know what I paid but I suppose one could make an argument that the couch is so ugly that no matter what I paid it was too much.
4. Yippee! Someone beside a friend or family read the blog. In this case, this was the second comment ever from a person we didn’t know. Our first comment came from someone that found our blog through Kelly’s blog. Unforunately, Kelly took away her link to byufan.net. Bummer, she was our biggest provider of new traffic! My email address went out to a mission reunion list so I suspect this is someone that came to our website because they saw my email address and wondered what byufan.net was.

As far as comments/commentors in general go, I have the policy that I’ll allow any comment as long as it isn’t spam. This site doesn’t get any traffic to lure the whacko type commentors. Perhaps some day I’ll have to worry about that – but not today. So, fire away with comments and I’ll be happy to approve them (all comments go through moderation to prevent spam) – even if I don’t agree with them.

UPDATE 10/04/2007 09:57:00 – I just reread the post where I confessed at the end that we probably overspent on the whole project so I think in this case the commentor was simply agreeing with my own conclusion.

Well, everything and nothing at the same time. We’re busy working, going to school, running the household, etc; however, there isn’t anything really newsworthy going on. I went to Colorado Springs last week for a couple of days on business. I was planning on getting a picture of the Air Force Academy but unfortunately I forgot my camera. One thing I did notice as we drove by the Academy was that the stadium seats spelled out “CHAIR FORCE”.

A bit of googling revelead that it was a prank pulled by the Navy. The cadets must be efficient at removing evidence of pranks because the next day when we drove by the CH was already gone.

Other than my trip to Colorado Springs, I enjoyed watching BYU beat New Mexico, getting stuff done at work, working on our family puzzle at home, and generally just having a regular old week.

On the last Saturday of September we got two big surprises. Grandma and grandpa called us up and invited us to go out to lunch with them before they went out of town and we got our first snowfall of the season. The kids got to choose the place we went, so we went to Applebees. Sam was supposed to have a soccer game at 2pm. but because of weather it was cancelled. We would rather go out with grandma and grandpa than go to a soccer game anyways. While we were eating lunch the rain turned to snow and by the time we got home it was coming down in earnest. I decided to grab the camera and have one of the kids take a picture of me outside in the snow. Luckily nowadays we have digital cameras that let you look at a picture first before you decide you want to keep it. I deleted my picture and took one of just the snow.