"Impossible Things Are Happening Everyday"

Way back in September, I mentioned that Lorelai got a part in her school's stage production of Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. Well, after months and months of practicing, showtime finally arrived this last Easter weekend! It was a great opportunity for Lorelai and it was really fun, as her mom, to watch it all unfold. I had actually never seen Rogers & Hammerstein's version of the Cinderella story before, so that made it doubly exciting for me.

When Lorelai first got a part in the play, I was a little worried she would be jealous of the kids who had bigger parts. As it turned out, she was content with her smaller role. Lorelai isn't a very "dramatic" girl (not as much as her younger sisters, anyway). Although Lorelai can be a ham within our house, she is more reserved in public and doesn't actively seek out the limelight. She has a good singing voice and speaking voice, but she doesn't use either very loudly. So it made sense for her to be part of the chorus, and fill some small supporting roles. She was still excited to do these small parts, and to watch the whole thing come together as everyone contributed their efforts.

The rehearsals were almost always after school on Thursdays, and I didn't see any of them. In fact, I didn't even drive Lorelai to the rehearsals most of the time! Thursday afternoons tend to be one of my busier days of piano teaching, so I always had to find someone to take her back to school for me. Luckily, my friend Shannon, who lives pretty close by, had two children also in the play (in fact, her oldest daughter Sarah was playing Cinderella for the Saturday night performance!). She graciously volunteered to drive Lorelai to and from school almost every week. I was so grateful to Shannon this school year...and to all the other moms who helped drive my daughter around! Without them, she might not have had the opportunity to appear in the play at all.

Here's Lorelai reciting her line

Even though Lorelai's part was small, she did have a solo line as a towns-person in the opening number, "The Prince Is Giving A Ball." Officially, her character's name was "Sloppy Sister," and her line was "I wish that I were nice and neat." This was one of the biggest numbers in the whole show; everybody sang it. As a result, I would hear Lorelai loudly singing this around the house for months. Each cast member also got a CD with all the music from the play on it, and so I had some familiarity with all the numbers long before I ever saw the play. I probably wasn't as sick of the music as the directors were, though!

Besides that opening number, Lorelai appeared in a number of choruses and one additional dance number as a member of the royal palace staff. The staff were all carrying large platters of food to show to the king and queen, in preparation for the upcoming ball. Lorelai was the shortest of the dancers, and she was carrying a huge (fake) turkey on a plate. I thought it was pretty adorable.

The play director (a woman named Diana, in my LDS ward) enlisted the help of several other church members to put the play together. The bishop's wife sewed dozens of costumes. Another woman was the "voice coach" who helped the kids learn how to sing the songs. Still another woman choreographed the ballroom-dance numbers. Others helped build the sets, distribute flyers and generate publicity, run errands, and do any other number of things.

Sadly, I didn't get to help much on the play at all, due to my aforementioned busy schedule. As a former drama club member in high school, I am very aware of how much work it can be to put on a play...especially on the level Diana was shooting for. I felt a little guilty about not helping out the whole year, so when performance week rolled around, I overcompensated by coming for all the dress and technical recitals. I even volunteered to be backstage for the Friday night performance, to help change scenery, costumes, props, and the like. By then, the show was running pretty smoothly (well, as smoothly as it can when elementary and middle schoolers are the stars!). However, it felt good to provide help, miniscule as it was.

Plus, I got to take some really cute pictures of the kids in all their costumes.

It was so cool to see them all dressed up and reveling in their characters! Those were very long nights (especially the tech rehearsal, which involved stopping the actors over and over and over again to tweak the sound/lighting/etc.), but the kids were patient and all the adults were troopers. I don't think I cooked a proper meal all week, but my family was incredibly understanding. It was a fun week...it reminded me of the "performance weeks" for all the plays in high school, and the adrenaline rushes they produced. However, I think I am a little older now than I was then, because I was totally wiped out when this week was over, while Lorelai seemed to recover a lot more quickly!

I went backstage before the show on both Friday and Saturday (the Primary room had been converted into the girls' dressing room), to help Lorelai get her hair and makeup done. Being a Plain Jane myself, I actually had to watch the other moms to see what to do with both hair and makeup. I felt pretty worthless, especially the first night! Luckily, there was a ton of extra makeup handy to bring out Lorelai's eyes, cheeks and lips.

She looked so lovely, no matter which of her costumes she was wearing. No matter what she thinks of herself (in her personal bio written for the program, Lorelai said, "I am a tomboy"), Lorelai is turning into a beautiful young lady. She had fun oohing and aahing over herself in the mirror after she'd gotten all dolled up.

 

One of the many things this week taught me was that my girls are growing up fast, and before I know it they're going to want makeup of their own (which I should have had ready to hand for this play!), and hairstyling supplies of their own. They're going to want their ears pierced (in fact, Lorelai is already begging to do just that). They're going to want their own sets of curlers (Celeste has already borrowed mine within the last week). In short, I need to start stocking up on more beauty supplies! Whether I use them or not, chances are my girls will make good use of them eventually.

The show played twice: Friday, April 18th and Saturday, April 19th, 2014. Diana was very fortunate to be able to use our local LDS Stake Center. It was a really nice venue in which to hold the play, reflecting well on both the church and the school. It also ended up being something of a missionary opportunity, as people from other faiths attended both shows.

Nathan was originally going to bring the family to just one show, but ended up attending both. That way, he was able to compare the two shows. The seven or so largest parts in the show were double-cast, meaning that a different crew played the main parts on each night. This gave more kids the opportunity to gain performance experience. While I had certain actors I preferred to others in certain parts, all the main actors did a great job. The sound system and lighting were semi-professional, as well. All told, it was very impressive for a play put on by a K-8 school!

I was also so glad my dad was able to attend; his hearing is starting to fade, so I'm not sure how much of each play he heard (despite the nice sound system). However, he was so patient and kind in his support of his granddaughter.

Lorelai looked so cute in her "ball gown" at the end! However, she wasted no time in changing out of it; she couldn't wait to be back in her T-shirt and shorts again. At least I managed to take a few pictures.

 

A couple of weeks later, every member of the cast got a DVD copy of both performances. It was very well put together and the girls loved it; they watched it over and over again for a few days!  We also got extra copies to send to both sets of grandparents. We are very happy to have a physical back-up of the experience.

When the play was finished, everyone was exhausted but very happy...especially Diana and her sister Cindy, who'd served as assistant director. On Saturday night, Diana said she would have to wait a few years before trying the show out again. Then suddenly, within a week, she totally reversed course, and declared that yes, there would be another musical put on next year. And it would be Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which will be a more complicated production in many ways! I have to admire her ambition. On the plus side, though, she will be able to recycle a lot of the costumes & sets she used on Cinderella, so from a budget perspective, the play won't be as challenging next year.

Despite being a little burned out after Cinderella wrapped, Lorelai is eager to try out for the play again next year. With a little more performing experience under her belt, who knows? Maybe she will land a bigger part next time. Or maybe she'll still have fun taking it easy as a chorus girl. Either way, I hope she has as much fun next year as she did this year. And I hope Celeste and Aurora will get their chance someday, too (Celeste will still be too young to try out for Beauty and the Beast next fall). I am so glad my daughter got this chance to be on stage; it made for a really fun school year!

Oh, What A Busy Spring It Has Been...And It Isn't Over Yet

I'm going to use the title of this blog post as an excuse for not having written in the blog much lately. It used to be that May was the "busy" month for our family, what with school getting out, extracurriculars winding down, and the like. But with each passing year, April seems to get busier and busier, as if all these extra activities are starting to venture out of their "natural habitat" of May and encroaching into earlier months as well.

I am trying to grow some plants again this spring! Here's what they looked like the day I planted them.

Of course, this year, my April and my May are both terribly busy, judging by my daily planner. And with our Disneyland trip in mid-March kicking everything off, well...let's just say I am really looking forward to summer vacation! Our spring has been non-stop, and I would like just one week of lounging around doing nothing.

So here's a "laundry list" of a blog post, in which I check off the comings and goings of my family in this spring of 2014. Some of these events will be covered in greater detail in future blog posts, but this should give my family and friends (and future-me) a sense of what our everyday lives have been like lately.

March:

-Disneyland Prep Time. I've written plenty about Disneyland already, so I won't harp on it any more here. However, a trip like Disneyland also required a lot of preparation/packing time in early March, so I'm going to include that in my "laundry list"! Packing, paying bills, making last-minute arrangements, finding a baby-sitter for our guinea pigs...these were the little, tedious things that occupied my time for the first half of March. But that wasn't all!

-Leprechaun Traps. I helped Celeste design a "leprechaun trap" for her kindergarten class, in honor of St. Patrick's Day (which we missed due to Spring Break, but what can you do?). I am no expert at home crafts, but I have to say, this one turned out all right. It's a classic "box held up by twig connected to string" contraption; hopefully we'll be able to find an actual leprechaun to trap one of these days.


-Pi(e) Day. As many of you (and by "you," I mean "math nerds") probably know, March 14th is unofficially known as Pi Day (because pi = 3.14 et al. Get it?). The traditional food of Pi Day is, of course, pie--any kind, doesn't matter, so long as it's round and delicious. For the last few years, the math-loving foodies in our LDS congregation (and there are more than a few of those) have organized a "Pi Day" celebration at a nearby park. Everyone brings pies they've made (or bought), everyone eats, plays, socializes, leaves. Pretty simple stuff, but fun.

I guess life must have gotten pretty busy for everyone, because nobody spearheaded the park get-together this year. But that didn't stop me from getting the pie-making "itch"; I cooked a few pies and bought a few more, so we could feed the missionaries that night:

Yum! I asked the elders what their favorite types of pie were so I could have some ideas. I ended up making a chocolate banana cream pie, an apple pie, and a pumpkin pie. I also made a tomato pie (basically a tomato/cheese casserole in a pie crust), and a chicken pot pie, and then got lazy (hah!) and bought two quiches from CostCo. It was quite a lot of pie, but elders are HONGREH people and so they ate most of it anyway (with our family's help). It's nice to see people happy because of food you made for them.

-Tucson Festival of Books. Maybe if I'd stayed at the festival for longer than an hour or two, this might have merited a whole blog post by itself. But alas, our visit there was quite short; we were busy getting ready for our trip to California, so we didn't have time to linger. That was a shame, because I found myself really enjoying the Tucson Festival of Books. I'd had friends recommend it to me in the past, but this was the first year anyone in our family had attended (I took Lorelai along with me, but everyone else stayed home).

The Festival was really cool, and had a little something for everyone. First of all, Lorelai got a free book of her choice in one tent. That was a great beginning! There were literally dozens and dozens of booths, vendors, performers, and interactive exhibits sprawled across the University of Arizona campus; it would have taken hours and hours to properly sample them all. I found myself overwhelmed at the volume of books for sale, both new and old. There was a whole section of the Festival devoted to science, with lots of hands-on (and often literary-themed) science experiments for kids (like the "Oobleck" paste Lorelai is playing with here):

There was also this "wishing tree," in which kids could write their wish on a bookmark, then hang it on the tree.

These are just a scant few of the many, many activities that were available. Authors were present for interviews, panels, and autographs (I saw a huge line for R.L. Stine snaking around several buildings, for example). There was even a small local circus performing a show as we made our way home! Overall, it was a great festival that was cheap, fun, and busy, and did a great job promoting a love of learning, reading, and writing. I'm hoping to take the rest of the family with us next time.

April

-General Conference/lemonade stand/book club/game night weekend. The first weekend in April is one of two weekends each year that feature the LDS Church's General Conference, a two-day televised series of gospel-related subjects (the other weekend is at the beginning of October). As luck would have it, the April conference also coincides with our community's neighborhood-wide yard sale. Last year, our family participated in the yard sale by selling a bunch of our stuff. This year, we had nothing to sell, but I decided to let the girls vent their entrepreneurial spirit. Nathan and I helped them set up a lemonade stand to sell treats to shoppers traveling through our neighborhood. After going to a book club with Lorelai on Friday night, I made a bunch of goodies for the girls to sell...

...and during most of Saturday morning and early afternoon, one or more of the girls managed to sell off most of the goodies. We weren't able to watch all of the Saturday session of General Conference due to helping the girls out, but we didn't mind, because I think they learned a few things while peddling their wares. All things considered, they had a pretty tidy haul. We took some of the money and splurged at McDonald's to celebrate, and put the rest into the girls' piggy banks. That evening, while Nathan was attending the Priesthood (men's) session of Conference, I took the girls over to a friend's house and we pawned off the rest of our treats there.

All that running around on Friday & Saturday, and we still managed to head over to our friend's house on Sunday night and have a game night. Busy weekend! Plus, I managed to snag this:

My girls have been bugging me for an outdoor play house for YEARS, and they finally got their wish. It's old & dirty, but darned if they don't love it anyway. I hope it will keep them happy for a while.

-Celeste's many field trips.  During standardized-testing week at our charter school, the younger grades are often taken on field trips, so as to lower the noise on campus and help the older students concentrate better on their testing. In past years, kindergarten and first grade have gone on one (sometimes two) field trips during testing week. This year, Celeste's kindergarten class took three field trips in three days! Crazy. On the first day she went to the Reid Park Zoo...

I showed up with Aurora in tow...not as an "official" parent chaperone, but as an extra set of hands, should one be needed. It was fun to follow in the kindergartner's noisy, joyous wake, even if I'd been to the zoo many times before.

The next day the class went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum; I was unable to attend this time since I couldn't bring Aurora along. As it turned out, it was a very hot day (mid-nineties), and the Desert Museum is not terribly shady and comfortable (my advice: visit the Desert Museum in the winter months whenever possible!). Celeste had fun, but she was visibly exhausted after school that day, to the point where she begged off her dance class that afternoon. The following day her class was kicked outdoors yet again, this time to nearby Anamax Park, which thankfully had plenty of shade for everyone to share. The kids blew bubbles, played on the playground, wrote on the sidewalk with chalk, and generally had a good time while the adults visited. What a tiring week for Celeste! Hopefully all the older kids did well on their testing, as payment for inconveniencing my daughter.

-I hoted my first baby shower. Although I have attended plenty of baby showers in the past, I had never actually hosted one before. Two days after Celeste's last field trip, that changed. My visiting teaching companion and friend Kristin was having her fourth baby...but it was her first boy, after three cute girls. Many of the other ladies in our LDS congregation agreed with me that Kristin needed a shower, to stock up on the baby-boy gear. Luckily, Kristin is a very laid-back type, and had no expectations about how the shower needed to be. The planning didn't end up being too difficult. I sent Nathan and the girls away for the morning to a school carnival; I had a couple of friends volunteer some food; I cooked some cookies; and I came up with some very easy party games (well, just one...my friend Elizabeth planned the other one, but I ran the game since she couldn't attend that day).  Everything went fine! Turns out I was stressed out over nothing. Maybe I have been to too many "immaculate" baby showers that belonged on Pinterest, so my low-maintenance one didn't look too impressive by comparison. But everyone who attended seemed happy at the end of the day, so I'll call it a victory.

I also hosted Aurora's playgroup in the middle of April, and we made these personalized pillowcases, which were stamped with bug pictures. It was a lot of fun. And that's all I have to say about that.

-Cinderella, my parents, and an egg hunt on an emotional Easter weekend. I say "emotional" because a dear friend of mine had a tragic death in her family on this weekend. Although I wasn't directly affected by it, her sadness definitely put a shadow over the holiday. I spent much of the time worrying about my friend, and feeling unable to aid her in her grief. I was grateful that the Easter season was upon us; it helped me remember that our Savior was resurrected so all mankind can live again someday, and so families can ultimately be together forever. I don't know if that thought comforted her at the time, but I sincerely hope it will give her peace in the months and years to come.

The days leading up to the play were also the time to prepare for the arrival of my parents, who decided to visit us for Easter weekend. This would also coincide with our school's presentation of Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, the play Lorelai had been cast in and had been practicing for over the last several months. I'll write a separate blog post about the play shortly; suffice it here to say it was a very time-consuming experience, especially the week of the performance!

My father flew in on Friday morning. The play's first performance was Friday night. On Saturday morning, we remembered it was also Easter weekend and hurried over to the park, where our LDS ward's Primary was holding its Easter egg hunt. The girls did pretty well for themselves!

We spent Saturday afternoon doing something that, shockingly, our family has never done before: dyed Easter eggs!

 

Usually, we just buy candy for the kids' Easter baskets, but this was a lot of fun for everyone. We even had to boil up an additional batch of eggs to color because the girls were enjoying themselves so much. Plus, we got to make a lot of deviled eggs, so it was doubly enjoyable.

That Saturday night, there was one more performance of Cinderella before the play was finished at last. My mom flew in from Utah later that night (she wasn't able to make it in time for the play, but none of the kids seemed to mind!). The next morning, Grandma & Grandpa made sure to hide a bunch of Easter eggs around the house while the rest of us were in church.

And that night, we managed to eat a lot of delicious food to celebrate our Easter...

My parents stayed in town for a few more days (I'll write an additional blog post about this later as well), and after their departure, I didn't know what to do with myself. I decided to deal with this feeling by climbing up on our roof and hacking off a bunch of branches from the huge mesquite tree in our front yard:

It will probably take us months to throw out all the branches, but at least this monster tree has been pushed back from our house for a time (we'll see how long that lasts...mesquite trees grow like weeds!). I felt a great sense of accomplishment for doing such an intensive task. Later on that day, I began to feel other things...physical things, like intense soreness in my back and shoulders, and weak wobbly knees. Maybe I overdid things a little bit, but at least the task is done for now.

Due to the sore muscles and my parents leaving, I hobbled my way to the end of April. Our family actually managed a second trip to the zoo on the very last day of the month...we went with some friends who will be moving out of town at the end of the school year. They had a lot of extra coupons to burn at the zoo, so we got to feed the giraffes and even ride the train this time! It was the most exciting zoo visit we've had for quite a while.

I can't remember the last time a month went by faster for me than this April has done. Something was going on every single weekend, and my weekdays were ridiculously busy as well (I haven't even mentioned my visiting teaching, and my piano lessons, and all the usual stuff). There are a few big events coming up for us in May; I wonder if this month will breeze by at the same speed?

Yay! My plants are growing...and there are even some tomatoes developing! Keeping my fingers crossed. Stay tuned!

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.