Life as a Yowler

I never realize how often my kids pee, until we go to Disneyland. You’ve got the nervous pees(before rides) on top of the regular pees. Thank goodness it’s Disney and everyone’s understanding. I’ve learned to NOT just leave the line frustrated. Find a worker and tell them. They’ll let you right back on. I’ve also learned to really take advantage of the rider’s swap. That’s the only way to get everyone on the ride quickly. One adult stays with the baby(who can’t ride), then gets to fastpass and do the ride after everyone else. It’s beautiful! We did three days of Disney. We got the third day for free. Disney was running a special. Here in California, there are only two Disney parks. So we did each park, then looked at the map and figured out what we didn’t get done. We opted to go back to Disney Land, instead of California Adventure the third day. We let my brother, Evan, pick. He thought there was more left to do at Disneyland.

Can I just say that these theme parks are a blast. They’re lots of fun. But they are EXAUSTING! I feel as though I got run over by a dump truck. Evan said last night “I can’t believe how tired I am. I’m shocked.” I mean when you think of a theme park, you think of fun. But it’s tiring. Pushing our two double strollers. Keeping up with Brandon. Brandon is not a fast, athletic mover……except in theme parks. He books it. Dealing with crowds. It’s so tiring. Honestly the crowds weren’t terrible. I’ve learned to prefer California over Florida. The weather is so much better. The crowds are so much better. We didn’t wait longer than 20 minutes for anything. A lot of things were 5 minutes. We can pretty much get every single ride every time we go to Cali.

Yesterday, we got put on a back up list for a Star Wars ride. Now, I have to admit, I don’t really like Star Wars. I was ticked at Brandon for wasting our time. Apparently this ride is the number one attraction of Disneyland. Well, we were waiting around all day seeing if we got called by chance. By 6pm, we were up to 4 stars. We needed 5 stars to be called. Sure enough by 7pm, we got called. Yay! I still wasn’t thrilled. Everyone else was though. And I have to admit, this ride was amazing. The amount of detail they put into this thing, almost, almost convinced me to watch Star Wars.

We got abducted and here was our captain.

We were not allowed to smile. We had to walk single file. We had to hurry. Caed took his role very seriously. I rode with him, using my rider’s swap.

Brandon is always a butt about letting us meet characters. He feels it’s a waste of time. I told him, I’m going to get pushy and insist on meeting the ones we’ve never met before. Gaston was one of them. We only had to wait 5 minutes. My only complaint…..he doesn’t sign autographs. He doesn’t know to read or write. He avoids books.

Another character we’ve never met is Peter Pan. Brandon never lets us take the time, but I pushed for it this time. I don’t regret it. Peter Pan did a story time with the kids. Brielle was chosen to play Cinderella.

Brandon was chosen to play the role of an ugly stepsister. I now have some recorded material that is pure gold!

Mary poppins sat right beside me and Isla during the story time. I asked her if she would come be our nanny. She said she can’t. She has to stay at Disneyland, unfortunately.

We met Rapunzel and Flynn.  We’ve never met Flynn before.

We met the new Elsa and Anna, after their new looks from the second movie.

Isla’s favorite is Tinker Bell. We met her twice. I took her while others went on rides. She wanted to go again a third time, but we never made it back.

Merida was very sweet. She’s one of my favorites. She had an amazing Scottish accent.

I took the younger kids to check out Mickey’s toon town, while the older ones rode rides. It was really cute. We saw the inside of Goofy’s house and played in Goofy’s playground.

We can’t go without seeing Mickey Mouse.

He was dancing with Brielle.

This girl is fearless. She loves rides. She went on every roller coaster she could. She also went on Guardians of the Galaxy(tower of terror) for the fourth time. She was our only kid that rode. Joah and Caed said no way. Tomorrow is Brielle’s 6th birthday. I can’t believe she’s 6 already.

Overall we had a great time. We will spend the next couple days resting and recovering. Somewhere in there, we will celebrate Brielle’s birthday.

The night before we went to Disney, we drove into Hollywood, which we’ve never done before. I was surprised it wasn’t just a drive by thing. You had to drive up the mountain into a park. You had to park, then get out and hike for awhile to see the sign. We didn’t get there until right at sunset,  so we knew we wouldn’t have time to hike before it got dark. We talked to a security guard. He told us where to drive to see it from a distance. 7 minutes later, we were here.

We also drove by the Modern Family houses. Brandon and I love watching this show. The three houses were all within 10 minutes of each other. They seemed very legit to the show. The neighborhoods and everything seemed real. Two of the homes looked lived in. There were lights on. Mitch and Cam’s house had a statue in the window and a recording playing, that freaked us out a little bit.

We drove right by the Abby Lee Dance studio on our way to the Modern Family houses. I used to watch the show when it first came out. I knew she had a studio in LA now.

Unfortunately, it was dark when we got there, but you could still definitely tell this is Phil and Clair’s house.

Here’s Mitch and Cam’s house.

Here’s Jay and Gloria’s house. It was in a very high security, gated community. We took our picture fast and got the heck out of there.

We couldn’t see the houses and go to Disneyland without watching the Modern Family episode where Dylan is a Dapper Dan at Disney. We had the dvd right here in the motor home and we watched it last night. It’s one of my all time favorite episodes. We also saw the pair of yellow Minnie Mouse slippers that Jay buys Gloria in one of the gift shops.

Great great memories! And sore, old, lazy adults!