M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Last March (I know, I know we're just getting around to posting it now. Hang tight and over the next week, we'll catch up to the future, I promise) we went to Disneyland.

When we went on vacation as kids, it never failed: someone would inevitably throw up just before we piled into the car.

Evan seems to have inherited that gene. The day before we left, he woke up throwing up and bestowing upon us the nastiest, ickiest diapers ever (when we were lucky enough to catch it in a diaper instead of in our laps)


Kathryn was nice enough to let us stay in St. George on our way down and we thanked them by spreading this pleasant illness to the boys of their family.

The first week, we were in the Disneyland Hotel. It was full of long meetings for Ryan, small hotel rooms and long walks through downtown Disney for Evan and I. It was also cold, rainy and boooooooooooooooooooring. Evan spent most of his time at this big window, straining to see the cars below.

 

But we had a really cool headboard that played when you wish upon a star and twinkled with stars. We had the song stuck in our heads for DAYS!

And Mickey was e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Just when you thought they couldn’t put him anywhere else, he showed up on the bathroom tiles as soon as they got wet.

For the next couple days we headed down to San Diego to visit the beach, which wasn't exactly a hit. 

We then spent a day at the San Diego zoo. Evan wasn’t as impressed as we thought he’d be. I guess even huge animals aren’t all that interesting if you can’t be nose to nose with them. We would point at the giraffes and Evan would be staring at the tour bus drive by behind us.

He did like this leopard cat thing. It was pacing around its cage, and Evan got excited every time it walked toward him so it went like this: toward us = excitement… away from us = bored… toward us = excitement… away from us = bored…

Then Ryan's mom and sisters met us and we all headed out to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. We broke Evan in on the Pirates of the Carribean.

And we took him on every ride we could get away with. But his favorite, by FAR, was Small World. I really think that ride is just like a live version of Baby Einstein. Even the outside of the ride held him entranced. The whole time waiting in line, this is what he looked like:

Evan's a pirate. Aaarggh.

It wouldn't be Disneyland without meeting Mickey.

And Donald Duck is a favorite of both mine and Ryan's so we were pretty thrilled when Joni spotted him for us. Donald preened and puffed when we held up our (newly purchased) Donald doll for the picture. He thought it was pretty cool

Knott's Berry Farm was more for the big kids, namely these Lusty goofs. Here we are waiting to go on the Ghost Rider which is terrifyingly fast and lots of fun. We went on that one probably about 8 times in a row.

Since all the kiddie rides were duds, the highlight of that day for Evan was when I let him crawl all over the icky ground. The park was MUCH less crowded than Disneyland and the poor kid was so sick of the stroller.

It was a fun trip and hopefully Ryan's work trips will make it possible for us to go many more times in the future.