Late Winter Play

Thought I should pick up the family blog baton once again, 8th times the charm - right?  Spring is always a rough season in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont.  It is commonly called mud and black fly season.  So as you might guess there is not much to report on during this season since we stay inside.  As such, it provides the opportunity to reflect upon past fun times.

This last April the family took a trip to Southern California.  Grandpa sprung for 5 days at Disneyland.  With him picking up the bulk of the entertainment cost, we took a few days on our own in Oceanside.  We bought a ton of food and hung out at the beach, went to Universal Studios, and ate a zillion corn dogs (found out they are actually quite good dipped in queso).

Universal is always a fun place and a little more fun as the kids get bigger.  I was a bit annoyed with the 45 minutes it took to travel 15 feet and buy admission tickets.  They were trying to up sell everyone to a season pass (and then take in all of the information needed for the annual pass).  The kids loved the backlot tour, as you can see with the boys below.

Still, my favorite part was the Jurassic Park ride, despite getting the front my pants wet in a rather embarrassing manner.  When it cam time to head home, after a long but rather good day of fun, we could not find the car keys.  After a few moments of panicking, Adrienne found the keys in the lost of found.  Crisis averted.

The beach was just outside of the place where we were staying.  Ronin did not have his swimsuit with him, so he ran amuck in his tiny-whities.  The beach had a real nice breaker-pier-thingie that was nice to walkout on and watch the waves roll in, particularly at night.

My brother lives in San Diego and we went to church with his family.  Ronin did not take to the new ward, so he and I spent most of the second hour outside of the church looking at the view an taking glamour shots.

After a couple of days of fun at Oceanside, we finally made it to Disneyland.  Grandpa put us all up in the Grand Californian; the hotel is attached to California Adventure.  So we could run in and out of the park.  With some of the kids now older, we were able to spit up and all have fun at the pace we liked.

With five days we got to have fun and go on all of the ride and taking nice pictures.  The hotel included a character breakfast.  Ronin enjoyed Rosie O'Donald or whatever this monkey name was.

Dad trying to look good around a couple of cute girls.

The kids' favorite part was hanging out with their cousins.  We ended up with a lot of the girls.  They were darling and fun.  I did have to let them know that uncle Brett was not too much an old fuddy-duddy by showing them that I could still do a cartwheel.

I think that overall the family's favorite ride was Splash Mountain.  Ronin loved going on the "logs."

We took that chance of having all of the family together and got a picture of Grandma and Grandpa with all of the grandkids.  Quite the group.

In the end, it was a great trip with fun family and lots and lots and lots of Disney.