VACATION

Hello all. Long time no blog.

We are freshly back from a much anticipated, much needed, long overdue vacation.
We went to Disneyland and California Adventure and Windy Hills Ranch with the two Indiana Jones doppelgangers pictured along with this post. My hope is to describe our trip in a new series of posts as time permits. First though, a brief update on my Dad’s health.

My Dad is now home from the hospital (and has been for more than a week) and recovering well. He’s certainly not back to 100%, but the recovery seems to be going as anticipated. He’s in pain and it interferes with his sleep and it is no fun by any means, but he is on the road he needs to be in and recovery seems to be going well, so praise God. He will talk to the doctors again today and get another scan, so we may know shortly (though probably not today) how effective the surgery was in killing the tumor.

Oh, by the way, this tumor was only the size of a baseball as opposed to his last nerf-football sized mass. That’s right ONLY a baseball!! My Dad grows some big tumors. Let’s hope and pray that is all in the past. Thank you all again for your prayers. They were a great comfort and much appreciated.

VACATION - Day 1

Boys are excited. Not regular excited. Not even, little boy excited. Wild monkey on speed who hasn’t eaten in two days about to be handed a banana excited. So, needless to say, there was screeching and loss of fur and that was just on the ride to the airport.

Then there was the airport, that endless font of pleasure and ways to annoy your parents and jet-lagged, weary travelers. It kicked off the first of many conversations that went something like:

Boy1 – Are we at Disneyland?

Dad – No, this is just the airport. It’s just like Disneyland except closer and without all the rides, characters and $27 french fries….no wait, they’ve got those. Oh and they are “freedom fries” anyway since the French are bad.

Boy2 – What? Freedom what? Why are the French bad? Are we going to France? Isn’t that too far? Do they speak Spanish there? What’s happening?

Dad – The French are bad because….

Mom (interrupting) – Don’t even think about it….

Dad – Nevermind, Daddy was just being funny.

Boy1 – Can I carry my own suitcase?

Dad – I think it will be too heavy for you little dude.

Boy1 – No it won’t. I’m Hulk. It’s not too heavy. Please, please, please, please, please, can I carry it?

Dad – Fine, here you go.

Boy1 – (Straining under the weight and struggling in vain to pull the suitcase.) – It’s too heavy, please, please, please, please, please, please, can’t you carry it for me.

Dad – No. And in fact, now you have to carry mine too.

Ok, so I didn’t really say that last line, but I did think it. Don’t get the wrong picture though. The kids were fantastic. Their mother has trained them well and they were excited, but behaved and pretty easy to herd around. Plus they loved everything about the airport which was also fun. They were, however perplexed by the following:

--Why would you walk on the moving sidewalk when it moves for you?
--Why doesn’t our house have large rotating doors?
--Why does Southwest allow family boarding after the A group, but before the B group and how do you get in A group?
--What does a Daddy have to do to get some freakin diet Pepsi around here. (ok, maybe that was just me, but enough Coke already).

The plane ride was a thing of joy and wonderment and the kids liked it too. When it was discovered that they would be serving apple juice and peanuts, they looked at me like they couldn’t figure out what heaven might have to one-up this experience.

The plane was followed by the rental car shuttle which included riding in a large van with no seatbelts which was…to quote G2….”AWESOME.” Then the rental car was awesome and the palm trees were awesome and the billboards for Hulk and Indiana Jones and Wall E were awesome. As an aside, the boys can do a dead on impression of WALL E’s robot voice. Fairly amusing really.

All of this was followed by driving on the 101 from Burbank to Thousand Oaks which was decidedly un-awesome. Thankfully, this was followed up by spending the evening with our good friends Sharon and Alan and their two brilliant and beautiful children who will remain nameless for security reasons. Seriously, they have no names in the name of security. It is really quite sad. But they are great kids anyway.

All in all the first day was a masterfully orchestrated (by my lovely wife), thoroughly satisfactory start to our vacation.

Tune in next episode for Jedi training, terrifying witches, height issues, sensory overload and all the magic of a child’s first day at the magic kingdom. And all for the cost of two years tuition with room and board at a private college. Sing with me now: “When you wish upon a star…….”