С Днем Pождения Мне

To some of you, the title of this blog may appear to be insane gibberish. But that's only because you're an uncultured American capitalist pig-dog! The letters in the title are Cyrillic; the language is Russian; and the message (translated into English) is "Happy Birthday To Me." My thirty-ninth birthday celebration (yikes!) involved a little bit of Russia and a little bit of outer-space drama. But, sadly, there were no cosmonauts included with the outer-space drama; that would have been an amazingly awesome culmination. But as it was, my birthday still turned out pretty well.

Space stuff first: I snagged a copy of Andy Weir's bestselling hit The Martian from our local library. I'd been hearing a lot of buzz about the book and thought I'd give it a try. It turned out to be even better than I'd expected, and it hit all my sci-fi- and space-adventure-loving buttons. The story is a simple one: The first manned expedition has landed on Mars and is settling into its base camp when a large freak storm forces the astronauts into an emergency evacuation. One of the astronauts, a botanist/engineer named Mark Watney, is swept away in the storm during the evacuation; he is lost and presumed dead. But in truth, Watney survived the storm, and now faces the prospect of surviving alone on Mars for a long time while awaiting rescue.

It's a pretty simple premise, but it makes for an engrossing, thrilling book; it reads much like an interplanetary, high-tech version of Robinson Crusoe (with a bit of Apollo 13 thrown in). Watney is the narrator for large chunks of the book, and he is such an engaging, funny, brilliant, and optimistic character that it's impossible not to start looking for the upside to every single near-death experience he has. Watney has to contact NASA (with no working communications array); feed himself for several years (only one month of food was sent with the astronauts); produce enough water for him to survive; and transport his entire base of operations several thousand kilometers away, to the site of the next landing party. This is all explained and carried out with page upon page of scientific babble, but it's done in such a matter-of-fact and clear way that I, as a non-sciency person, was able to follow it pretty easily. I won't lie; the story beats are somewhat predictable, but it's inspiring and fun to read all the same.

And then, just after I finished reading the book, Nathan and I were able to go see the movie adaptation of The Martian in theaters to celebrate my birthday! I'd actually heard about the movie's release a few months before; it's what inspired me to check out the book in the first place (I try to make a habit out of reading a book before seeing the movie adaptation).

I was a little worried the movie would disappoint, after enjoying the book so much. Isn't that often the case with movie adaptations? Luckily, it ended up being very enjoyable as well. Matt Damon, besides being an attractive fellow, is a great actor and he was the perfect guy to portray Mark Watney. In fact, the whole cast was excellent, and the script and the direction were all top-notch. I did notice a few changes in the story (and I was surprised by how many "big events" from the book's final third were left out of the last third of the movie), but I recognized that these were changes that streamlined the story and made it more "cinematic" without removing any of the drama or significant plot points. It was a great film and I'd highly recommend it! Older kids and teens would probably enjoy it as well (just watch out for some of the salty language that is sprinkled throughout).

Our movie date was just the first portion of my birthday date. Since Grandma Barrett was not available to babysit on Saturday, October 24th, we decided to split my birthday date "down the middle," doing the movie on the 24th, and the dinner a couple of weeks later when Grandma was available. Side note: our trip to see The Martian in theaters was also the first time we'd gone on a date while leaving our children behind unattended. Nathan and I were very nervous; the girls less so (of course!). But things all worked out in the end; we adults enjoyed our movie in the theater, the kids enjoyed their movie at home. In fact, all three girls were peacefully asleep in their beds when we arrived home. We are so grateful to have such obedient, well-behaved girls. Let's hope that trend continues into their teenage years.

The "dinner" portion of my birthday date took place a couple of weeks later, on Saturday, November 7th. For a couple of years now, I had wanted to try out Kalina, a Russian/Ukrainian restaurant in northeast Tucson. We first heard of them via their booth at Tucson Meet Yourself, and it gave me a taste of their delicious cooking. Though I acknowledge Russian cuisine isn't among the world's finest, it has a special place in my heart because of the time I spent in Moscow as a missionary for the LDS Church many years ago. Nathan thought my birthday would be a good time to finally try Kalina out; that, plus we had some coupons!

When we arrived, we found that there was to be a large family gathering there that same night, and the long table had already been completely decked out for their arrival. The place settings were so beautiful (and the food smelled so good) that I was immediately filled with confidence as to Kalina's quality.

We'd looked at the menu online before arriving, but we'd had a hard time deciding what to order. Once we arrived, however, we discovered a new item, unlisted on the website: the "First Russian Dinner for Two." It was basically a seven-course meal, with a sampling of a lot of famous Russian dishes. It didn't have every item Nathan and I were interested in, but it was close enough!

As you can tell, I was pretty darn excited to get started.

I did splurge a bit and get a pot of tea. If I'm eating Russian food, then I'd darn well better have some tea to go with it! This was lemongrass tea, which was delicious, but I think I'd like to try another kind next time. Nathan doesn't drink hot drinks, so I had the whole pot to myself! Hee hee hee.

We got a small basket with some rye bread and white rolls. Neither type was the best bread in the world, but it was the only mediocre part of the evening. First course was an appetizer platter: it featured salami slices, a mushroom deviled egg, a blue cheese pastry "bite," a salmon roll, and a slice of bread with tomato/eggplant bruschetta:

Soup course was next, featuring borscht, the most famous Russian soup, and a potato barley soup. They were both good, but one guess as to which one I was slavering over the most:

Russians aren't much for green salads, so both the salads in the salad course made heavy use of root vegetables. The top salad is known as an "Olivier" salad; it has potatoes, carrots, ham, eggs, and peas. The bottom salad is the "Vinegret": it has beets, carrots, peas, and pickles. Both were delicious!

We got vareniki (top) and pelmeni (bottom) as our next course. Russians love these little boiled dumplings, and will fill them with a wide variety of ingredients. On this night, the vareniki contained mushrooms and the pelmeni contained pork. These were probably my favorite part of the meal..definitely the best vareniki I've had since my mission!

The main course was beef stroganoff, which is beef in a heavy cream and mushroom sauce poured over egg noodles. Done right, it can be very tasty (if a bit heavy). Nathan loved it, and I did too...but I was getting pretty full by this point, so I had to take most of my plate home!

For dessert, we got a nice lemon layer cake to share. It was the perfect finish for our heavy meal; we needed something lighter!

Overall, we were both very impressed. Everything was delicious, and the service was prompt, helpful, and friendly. We will definitely be returning! We took the long way home, and tried to get a look at the building site of the new LDS temple that's going up in Tucson, but by this time it was quite dark and we couldn't see much. Oh well, there will be plenty of chances to revisit it later!

So what did I do on my actual birthday? Not much...just ate some cake...

...namely, this carrot cake (not pumpkin cake; the pumpkin's just there to look cute) that I made myself. The cake was covered with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting; sooo delicious. I invited some friends over to help me eat it. It wasn't a huge celebration, but I didn't need a big party. I got to go on multiple birthday dates, and had a great time at each one. Even though I'm older now, at least I'm still well-fed and happy; I must never take those two things for granted.

На здоровье! (That means "to your health")

Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 4

Our last day at Disneyland was mostly fun, but somewhat exhausting as well. We also learned a thing or two that day that will probably shape how we plan our Disneyland trips in the future.

The previous night, we'd told the kids we could only go to one of the two parks on our final day (due to our buying the "one-park-per-day" passes to save some money on the trip). As Nathan and I expected, the kids ultimately chose to spend the third day in Disneyland, although Aurora pushed for California Adventure for a little while  We hadn't forced Aurora to go on as many scary rides in California Adventure as we did at Disneyland, so ironically she was more wary of the more "kid-friendly" park!

In the end, we had a pretty fun second day at Disneyland, but I think we would have preferred more flexibility. Although we patted ourselves on the back for saving money with our ticket purchases, we felt there were many things left undone (or re-done) at California Adventure. In the future, we might consider using the "one park per day" passes for the first two days of our trip, and splurging on the Park Hopper passes for the final day. By then, all of us will have found "favorites" in each park, and can split up and explore those "favorites" for a little while in smaller groups. But that's an issue for the future; for now, while our kids are still fairly young, sticking to one park each day worked fine.

Well, "fine" is relative. For poor Aurora, one last torture:

Namely, making her ride on Big Thunder Mountain again. We all wanted to do it, and no one wanted to wait around at the gate with Aurora. We promised her we would never make her do any "scary" rides again that day. Here she is before the ride...

And here she is afterwards.

Poor kid. However, we kept our promise and let her be more choosy of our other experiences. I hope that satisfied her somewhat.

Other highlights:

We all tried out some new rides. Lorelai had her first experience at Space Mountain (Celeste rode it with Daddy on the first Disneyland day, and she loved it!). It's not my favorite ride (too dark and herky-jerky!), but I took both older girls this time. Lorelai's verdict: just "okay." I sense it will not be an eagerly sought-after ride in the future.

I got to experience Autopia for the first time that day. Basically, it's a go-kart driving course in Tomorrowland. The kids were able to to a lot of the driving themselves! Aurora tried her hardest, but couldn't quite reach the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time. Since I was riding with her, I had to do either one or the other, so our progress through the driving course was pretty slow. But the girls all felt very grown-up after "driving around" anyway.

After driving practice, we decided to hop on the Disneyland Railroad, the large train that circumnavigates the whole park. I had ridden the train on our last trip with Aurora, while we were waiting for everybody else to finish a ride. But since Aurora was only a baby at the time, she didn't remember any of the ride. And I remembered the ride being peaceful and nondescript, with one huge exception. Towards the front of the park, I remembered the train driving past two huge dioramas ...one was a recreation of the Grand Canyon, and the other was a prehistoric wilderness complete with animatronic dinosaurs. For a long time after our first trip, I wondered if my brain hadn't "made up" that part of the experience. It was just such a random, strange thing to encounter on what was basically a commuter train ride!

Luckily, for this trip to the park, the whole family decided to ride the train with me, in order to verify my story and prove to me that I wasn't crazy or hallucinating.

from rollingwiththemagicblog.com

And what do you know? Those dioramas really exist. Between Tomorrowland and the Main Street U.S.A station, the train goes into a dark tunnel and the narrator on the train's loudspeakers suddenly put on an extra-dramatic tone. He announced that we would be taking a journey "along the rim of the spectacular Grand Canyon." WHA? And before you can say "Mickey Mouse," there was the diorama, with scenic backgrounds, steep rocky cliffs, and taxidermied animals galore, all staring eerily at us, while Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite" was blaring in our ears. It was pretty abrupt and startling.

from remainseatedplease.com

But then things got even weirder. Apparently, this humble railroad doesn't just travel through space in an eyeblink, but it can travel through time as well. The narration says something like, "The Grand Canyon didn't always look like this. Now we'll travel back in time to the Primeval World!!" And then, BAM! Dinosaurs...dinosaurs everywhere! Fighting each other, eating each other, dying and turning into oil, fleeing from exploding hot springs/volcanoes/etc. It's actually kind of awesome (if a little behind the times, paleontologically speaking). But it's so surreal. Just a few moments later, the train exits this dark, noisy, dinosaur-filled tunnel...and you're dropped back off at the main entrance of Disneyland, as if nothing had happened. Sooo strange. But a fun thing to share with your kids, who will probably giggle all the while...like mine did!

Another new ride we discovered this year was the Storybook Canal. It's a slow, small boat ride in Fantasyland; Nathan and I had always avoided it since we figured it was for "little kids." But by late afternoon of our third day at the parks, we were so tired that a slow, small boat ride sounded pretty good.

It was actually pretty cute! It features several of the "storybook villages" featured in various Disney animated films, but built in miniature. Alice's house (from Alice in Wonderland), Pinocchio's Alpine village, Aladdin's city of Agrabah, Prince Eric's seaside castle from The Little Mermaid...all those settings and many more are charmingly recreated next to the water. Surrounding them are an bunch of tiny trees & other miniature vegetation, which the tour guide informed us were actually cultivated to grow that way. It was a very peaceful, relaxing trip. And as it turned out, it was the last ride we went on at Disneyland; it was a good "come-down" from the adrenaline rush we'd been experiencing for the last three days.

However, our family's favorite "new find" at Disneyland was Tom Sawyer Island (or "Pirate's Lair," as it has since been re-titled). The last two times we've visited the park, Nathan and I frequently looked at the island from across the river, but never felt any urge to visit it. But we were feeling adventurous this time, so we boarded the small wooden ferry and floated across to the island's shore. And we were so glad we did, because we ended up exploring the island for about an hour!

 

There are at least a half dozen miniature caves scattered throughout the island, as well as several short nature trails, a pontoon bridge, several interactive "pirate artifacts," a few "abandoned" buildings, and a cool pirate flag and pile of treasure at one end of the island!

It was great to have an opportunity to wander aimlessly for a while, explore new locations, sit in the shade away from the big crowds, and feel lost in a remote place for a short time (albeit a fabricated one...nothing feels totally authentic at Disneyland). This more than made up for our disappointment at the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail being closed in California Adventure the previous day. It's nice to know that each park has its own nature exploration zone that we can escape to when the crowds get too oppressive! I think we will definitely want to return next time.

Aurora got to hug a Disney villain. We chose not to wait in any lines to meet any Disney characters on this trip; none of the "classic" Disney princesses, nor any of the new ones (we saw Merida once, but she had a long line waiting to see her so we passed). We certainly weren't waiting in line to see Princesses Anna & Elsa from the huge hit Frozen; that line was two or three hours long! Ugh...not even an animatronic Olaf would make that bearable for us. We walked right by Pixie Hollow; no Tinkerbell visit for us! We even skipped out on the lines for Thor & Captain America, as I mentioned earlier.

None of us were too bothered by not meeting any characters; we all decided we'd rather be doing other things. But Nathan and Aurora got an unexpected opportunity when Peter Pan and Captain Hook walked right past them in Fantasyland. It wasn't clear where exactly they were headed, or even where they'd been before Aurora spotted them...perhaps they were putting on a show somewhere else in the park. Whatever the case, Aurora was terribly excited. She loves the TV show Jake and the Never Land Pirates, which features Captain Hook as the grumpy, bumbling enemy of the main characters. She broke away from Nathan, ran over to Captain Hook, and gave him a huge hug. The Captain, maybe a little surprised (after all, how many kids want to hug Captain Hook?), returned the hug, then gave her a little "peck" on the top of her head, before moving on. Aurora beamed about it for hours. Unfortunately, it happened so fast Nathan wasn't able to get a picture, but it will be an awesome memory to remind Aurora of in the years to come.

We closed our visit with a tasty treat and some souvenir shopping. We'd heard lots of rumors about the Dole Whip floats for sale at the Tiki Juice Bar in Adventureland. It sounded simple enough; it's basically frozen pineapple-flavored soft-serve ice cream, floating in pineapple juice. The lines for these floats sometimes stretch out as long as the lines for some rides! But it was late afternoon, our time at Disneyland was winding to a close, so we decided to bite the bullet and splurge on a frozen treat for each of us.

And oh, my, were they delicious! I don't have any special love for pineapple (sometimes it's a bit too sweet for my liking), but this tasted perfectly cool and refreshing after a long hot day of walking around in the sun. We all really enjoyed it (in fact, Nathan recently found a copycat recipe and managed to duplicate it at home, so now we can indulge more often!).

After our treat, all that remained was our souvenir shopping. I'd encouraged Lorelai to bring along a little spending money for herself, and I had saved up some myself just before leaving for California. We went into a shop on Main Street, U.S.A., and let the girls go wild (within a reasonable financial limit, of course). Occasionally, we had suggestions for them that guided them to toys we thought they'd love (especially so, in Aurora's case; she had a hard time staying focused with all the awesome stuff laying around).

Here's what they all ended up with:

Lorelai got Perry the Platypus, one of the stars of the TV show Phineas and Ferb (we searched high and low for an "Agent P" doll, but there were none to be had there. Alas.). Perry was still pretty cool though...plus, he "chirps" when you squeeze his foot! Aurora ended up with a stuffed friend, too...Izzy, the little girl pirate from Jake and the Never Land Pirates. She had at first latched onto a Monsters, Inc. stuffed animal and was loath to part with it, but then I saw Izzy sitting on a shelf, and I knew Aurora had to have it. Once I placed it in her hands, she never let go of it for the rest of the day! (Well, maybe for a couple of minutes at the register). Celeste at first felt obligated to get another stuffed toy, but being the jewelry maven she is, we directed her to the music boxes and she fell in love with the Tinkerbell box. Now she has a lovely, musical box, and a place to store all her bling!

After buying all their toys (and pressing a few commemorative pennies near the park entrance), we headed back to our hotel for what turned out to be the final time. I had intended to go back to the park in the evening, after our dinner, but I lay down on my bed to rest "for a few minutes," and woke up close to an hour later! Here's what the kids were doing at that point...

Clearly, they were perfectly content to relax in the hotel room, and had no interest in wearing themselves out for one more night. With that, we started packing our bags and preparing for our (uneventful) ride home the next day.

By now, we were all as tired as Olaf here.

Even though our last evening (and our last day at the park) wasn't as action-packed as the two days that preceded it, we still had a wonderful time and regretted nothing. It was so fun to bond with the family and share this exciting experience. I don't know when we'll go back to Disneyland (probably in a few more years), but I know we will go back someday. It makes us all happy; despite the crowds, it is still a magical place, and there's nothing quite like it.

Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 3

Last time our family visited Disney's California Adventure, the park felt much like a "work in progress" in many ways. Large sections of the park were closed for renovations, improvements, or expansions. There were certainly nice sections of the park and a lot of fun rides, but it still felt like it was a place in search of an identity.

The "Phineas and Ferb" moving party truck...just one example of California Adventure's randomness.

 This time, our experience at California Adventure was quite different. The park felt bigger, since so many attractions were new or expanded. The crowds were larger, the energy was higher...in all, it felt like more was happening at the park, and that more people were genuinely excited to be there.

Outside the Monsters Inc. ride...another example of how the Pixar movies are helping to gradually overthrow California Adventure's original motif

Nathan pointed out to me that thematically, California Adventure is moving closer and closer to "Disneyland Phase II," and not the more California-centric motif it had originally envisioned. Mickey Mouse's huge face overlooks the whole southern half of the park via the huge Ferris wheel, and Pixar's growing stable of characters is crowding into more and more parts of the park. Even with all this, there were still a lot of nooks and crannies of the park that had an identity all their own, making California Adventure an odd but compelling melange of stuff to do.

But none of this answers the most essential question for this blog: Did our family have a good time? I'd say yes, definitely! California Adventure may not be quite as well organized spatially (or thematically) as Disneyland. It required a lot of walking, and it wasn't terribly shady, which made the warm weather a little more frustrating. But other than that, there were still a lot of things that kept us all occupied, and the girls all had a great time exploring and riding all the new attractions.

Probably the best part of the day for me had nothing to do with the park itself; I was able to meet up with my good friend Melanie Cruz, whom I've known since middle school. She is a beautiful, smart, and talented gal who has traveled the world and tried a little of everything over the years. She's lived in France for a year, worked in Antarctica with research teams, and has been working as an actress and going to school in Los Angeles for the last several years. We were pretty close in high school, but as life has gone on we haven't gotten to see each other as much. In fact, the last time we were together, I was pregnant with Celeste! So it was a great chance to meet up with her and let all the girls get to know her (and love her) a little better.

Here are a few of the day's highlights:

Cars Land. The most major upgrade to California Adventure (and the biggest symbol of that park's increased "Disney-fication") is Cars Land, a full-scale recreation of the movie's town of Radiator Springs. There are several stores, restaurants, and rides throughout Cars Land; you could conceivably spend half a day just in this part of the park.

Look, it's a real-life, full-sized Mater! He was driving all over Cars Land, creeping me out just a little.

Confession: neither I nor my family are big fans of the Cars films; maybe it's because none of us are little boys, or maybe because they're only fair to middling entertainment. But I enjoyed Cars Land nonetheless. From a design perspective, everything looks incredible and it perfectly captures the "dying Route 66 desert town" feeling that the movies were going for. Everything is built to scale, so it felt as if we had been transported directly into the films!

Plus, being a resident of Arizona, I loved seeing all the faux desert skylines throughout Cars Land, as well as the desert vegetation. It made me a little homesick...weird, considering where I was!

Anyway, the cornerstone of Cars Land is the Radiator Springs Racers ride, which is both a "theme ride" (you drive through several recreated scenes from the first Cars movie) and a "thrill ride" (the car you're riding in takes off for a speedy, looping, dipping joyride through the Cadillac Range Mountains). It was a fun ride, but oh...that line. Easily the longest wait of any ride for our entire trip. We briefly thought about getting FastPasses, but the line to get the FastPasses was an hour long itself! Eek. We decided to wait in line with the other "civilians," and we were there for well over an hour. Thankfully, I had the nice "faux-Arizona" scenery to keep me company, and there were several detours into shaded enclosures, all of which were cleverly decorated. And when we got to the front of the line, what happens? Celeste had to go to the bathroom. Curse the tiny Barrett bladders! That made us wait an extra 10-12 minutes on top of the hour we'd already waited. Thankfully that was our first ride of the day, so all the lines after that didn't feel too bad!

We tried out some of the other rides in Cars Land later on. Lorelai, Aurora, and Daddy tried out Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, which was a spinning ride. Instead of teacups, though, the riders sit in ungainly, rotating tractors. The girls enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I never got to try the ride myself, because at the same time, Celeste and I were riding on the Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror, for Celeste's first try at the creepy "falling elevator" ride. I had determined to be brave for my little "adrenaline junkie" middle child, but I spent too much time screaming my head off to be much of an example. I don't do too well with free-fall rides of any kind. I needn't have worried, though...Celeste loved it!

Later in the evening, Lorelai, Melanie and I snuck back into Cars Land one more time, to try out their final ride: Luigi's Flying Tires. It was basically bumper cars with mini-hovercrafts for each group of riders; the inflatable hovercraft "tires" sailed around on a thin carpet of air, and you steered by leaning one way or the other. It took a little while to figure it out, but it was pretty fun!

 

We revisited some favorites from last time, but missed out on others. This time, I was able to convince Nathan to go to Soarin' Over California, a neat flight simulator ride in which the riders are strapped to a harness and are then suspended, feet dangling, in front of a concave IMAX-style screen, which projects various famous California landmarks. I apparently didn't sell Nathan too well on this ride last time, because he really liked it and wished we could do it again.

We were also able to revisit Grizzly River Run (a whitewater rafting adventure in which you get very wet!). While on the ride, we met up with some fellow residents of Sahuarita, Arizona! Small world (no pun intended). I think half of Arizona was in Disneyland that week on Spring Break.

We also made it onto many of the "carnival-style" rides we loved last time around: the Silly Symphony Swings (Lorelai's favorite ride from our last trip; this time, she got to ride by herself!), the Jumping Jellyfish; and the totally fun Toy Story Midway Madness, in which the rider shoots at targets in a variety of virtual carnival games.

Unfortunately, some of our favorite attractions at California Adventure weren't available this time around. The Redwood Creek Challenge Trail (an awesome discovery park, with climbing walls, rope bridges, and zip-lines that were perfectly kid-sized) was closed for renovations. There would be no resting for us adults while the kids got their wiggles out this time around! Even more sad, California Screamin' (the only full-sized roller coaster in the California Disney parks) was closed the entire day we were there. This really bummed Nathan and I out, since we had looked forward to a more "adult-sized" ride (I'm not even a huge roller-coaster fan, and I really enjoyed California Screamin'). All things considered, though, it was probably for the best that it was closed. Celeste badly wanted to ride the roller coaster, but was about an inch below their minimum height requirement. Having the coaster be closed eliminated any possibility of her trying to "fudge" her way onto the ride (and any possibility of being denied, thus provoking bitter tears that would probably have ruined her afternoon). On our next Disneyland trip, our girls will all be that much taller, and this shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks, Wikipedia

We got to see a "whole new world." For whatever reason, Ariel is one of Aurora's favorite princesses. Imagine her delight, then, when she got to ride on Ariel's Undersea Adventures, a theme ride that walked its visitors through the basic plot of The Little Mermaid. She was in Disney princess heaven throughout, waving and shouting "hello!" to all the characters. The line was short, and the ride was cute. It was a wonderful palate-cleanser for Aurora, who we had been subjected to too many of the "big kid" rides for her liking (more on that in another blog post). In retrospect, I regret not going on this ride more than once; it would have made our little girl's trip!

Did I mention there's a Ghirardelli chocolate shop inside the park now? Well, there is...and it was glorious. I don't remember this shop being in the park last time, but if it was, we sadly missed it. We were very tempted by the chocolate ice cream sundaes offered, but we settled on buying a huge (4 lb. or so) bag of chocolate to greedily munch on for weeks to come. They also had the option of completely customizing a bag of chocolate. It was a dangerous place to visit, but a tasty one...we all got free samples!

We got to party with Mel. It was so much fun to catch up with Melanie and talk to her about life in general. We found her just before lunch-time, and she stayed with us through the rest of the day and into the evening. It was really handy at times to have an extra adult set of hands; it helped a lot when all of us but Aurora (for example) wanted to go on a particular ride. Not a problem...Melanie (or myself or Nathan) could stay behind, while the rest of us took off and rode a ride together.

She was such a good sport, she followed us back to the hotel, to partake in our glorious Crock-Pot dinner! Glad she doesn't have a picky palate...

As you might imagine, the girls were smitten with "Aunt Melanie." They held hands with her whenever possible, shared their innermost hopes and dreams, and always wanted her beside them on all the rides. Melanie really wants kids of her own someday; I hope letting her "borrow" mine for an afternoon gave her a nice "kid fix" to tide her over.

Since the little girls were too tired that night, they stayed behind at the hotel as Lorelai, Melanie and myself headed back into the park one more time to catch the World Of Color show. We got seats closer to the waterfront than last time, which means we occasionally got wet from the jets of water that sprayed high into the air in front of us. I was still impressed by the combination of lights, sound, and music; projecting movie images onto a wall of water is naturally a tricky business and it wasn't always completely successful, but it's still a very ambitious show. Some scenes from the movie Brave had been inserted in between our visits; other than that, it was the same show I remembered (maybe a little bit shorter?) A very dramatic way to end the day.

Lorelai was dead on her feet by the time we bade Melanie farewell and climbed back onto the bus. It was hard to say goodbye to my old friend, but it was wonderful that her presence had enriched our Disney Parks experience. Only one more day to go!