Archive for the ‘Vacation 2010’ Category
Again.
I got behind last year because of a Disney vacation and now it’s happened again. Here I was, all proud of myself for regularly posting again and then BAM! We do another week at Disney world and I’m right back where I was pre-November.
What can I say? I couldn’t really post that we were going beforehand since that would be like flashing a big neon sign welcoming the internets to come rob my empty house and it’s been crazy since we’ve been back because, oh hey, taking a week off in the middle of December is clearly the best.idea.ever.
The vacation was fabulous and much needed and I hope to get a post or two up about it this weekend IF the guilt from the unsent Christmas cards doesn’t kill me first.
Trip #1 with Ava (10 months old) was hell. Pure hell. It’s not that she was so bad – although there were more crying incidents than I care to remember – but 20+ hours of travel time from China -> Japan -> Chicago -> Home will do that to anybody. 3 layovers, mean TSA agents, horrible weather…we had it all. Thankfully we had purchased her own seat. It would have been unbearable if we hadn’t.
Trip #2 with Ava (1 year old) was more like purgatory. Since it was only a short flight with no layovers we didn’t think it necessary to buy her a seat. Bless the grandpa who was seated in our row for his patience and kindness to two very frazzled parents after being stuck on the tarmac for 45 minutes before taking off for our departure flight and thanks be that she fell right asleep (after soaking through her diaper leaving me with an unfortunate smell) on our return.
Trip #3 with Ava (2 years old) was a pleasure. She had her own seat and her own travel carseat, we had a backpack full of treats (that she rarely used), and we booked flights with her regular nap and sleep times in mind. Gah – apparently it was us all along that just needed to get it right for her.
Like letting her use the Sky Club since we had a loooonng layover in Atlanta after taking the red-eye from the West Coast:
What a difference a quick nap away from the general hubbub of the airport can make. Not to mention the free breakfast, wi-fi, clean bathrooms, and customer service from people who seem truly happy to help you.
The one disappointment I have with air travel in general lately is the trend toward not allowing people with small children to pre-board. Even before kids I never, ever minded letting families on first because clearly they had way more stuff and people to maneuver but it seems like that practice is now a thing of the past. I had to argue with every single gate agent – seriously, every one – for J to be allowed to pre-board in order to get the car seat installed. I finally told the mean Delta lady in San Diego that I would be more than happy to be the last one on the plane as long as she didn’t mind us knocking every single person we walked by in the head with the honking big car seat we were carrying. Ultimately she saw the logic in my way of thinking and waved us in just before opening the gates to the herd.
Overall – work/vacation to the West Coast was an overwhelming success but, as always, it was so good to finally be home.
Disneyland or Legoland? Legoland or Disneyland? What to do with our last full day in San Diego before taking the redeye home sweet home?
Well, with the assistance of M3, who kindly answered some questions for me via email, we ultimately decided on Legoland since we did Disneyworld last year and plan on visiting again this year.
LL was a relatively short drive up the coast and we made it in plenty of time to get ourselves lost in the employee parking lot while listening to J’s new GPS steer us wrong over and over again. We finally made it to the right place, parked in BFE, and schlepped our way in – still managing to forget half the things I’d brought (snacks, clothing, etc) for Ava. J was overcome with excitement as soon as he got a glimpse of the entryway. And the first picture he took in the park?
Was of the store. I kid you not.
There were lots of legos in the store. (Shocking, I know.) I’m certain we looked at every single one of them.
Ava was quite taken with the elephant
until it did this
at which point she flipped out. Screaming loudly and doing her level best to get out of the park – stat. Apparently having legos come to life wasn’t in her list of fun things to do today.
J calmed her down with a lego safari.
Whatever he said must have worked wonders. Maybe he told her she could shoot them…I dunno.
Just so y’all know – we were there for a long time. All day – which means there are lots and lots of pictures.
She lovedlovedlovedloved the little kids’ play area. There was a train which I wedged myself in to…
and honestly, she was way happier about it than she looked in this picture. She was all OMGOMGOMG a train – waving wildly at J on each circle ’round the track. I was all OMGOMGOMG because there were vegetables made of legos everywhere.
And she was in heaven with the playground area – liberally scattered with legos, of course. Except she couldn’t be happy with the billion and two lying around everywhere and instead started sneakily disassembling a fireman when she thought we weren’t looking. We rescued part of his hand from her pocket shortly after this photo was taken.
There was also a maze
which I had to lure her out of with the promise of carrying (and using) Mama’s chapstick.
We moved on to the Sky Cruiser ride which is like a giant lego car atop a track above the park. This is one of the more popular rides so we hurried over to get in line and wait. And wait we did. I stuck it out in line while J took Ava over to the adjacent lego play area strategically placed by most rides so parents can wait and kids can play. Great idea in theory but, according to J, not so much in reality since it was full of unsupervised brats who kept stealing each others legos.
Hence the evil eye in these photos:
All the while I’m waiting in the super long line – and thinking that for sure the kid in front of me was too little and betting he wouldn’t be allowed on the ride. So guess who was actually too short and was denied access to the Sky Cruiser? Yeah, that would be us. Well, specifically it would be little miss 35.5 inches who needed to be 36 inches. I was livid, by the way. We’d had her measured at the first ride and they said she was good to go for the 36 inch rides and it was mighty annoying to know you’d just waited for over an hour only to be turned away. I think it was at this point that I began to hate legoland – if only for a brief moment.
More dirty looks from J when Ava would get tired of waiting in line:
She toughed it out, though. And then she rode almost every thing that they would let her on.
Oh boy, guess what we found? More legos, Yay. <– insert sarcasm here
Ava, thankfully, was so bored and tired that she slept through this whole part of the park. I could have. For me, it was nifty for about 3 minutes. For J, I think he could have moved in and lived there forever – he loved it that much.
Although J did meet someone famous.
I do realize this is getting long and tedious so I’ll sum it up.
Legos. Everywhere.
And then Ava talked us into yet another expensive souvenir and our day came to a timely end when she was eaten by a shark. The End.
Okay, not quite the end.
We had some time to kill after the park closed since our flight didn’t depart until 11PM so we drove around a cool little island we unexpectedly discovered, found a park to let Ava play in, met some really nice people, and watched our last San Diego sunset.
The End. (For real, this time.)
Since I worked late the day before I didn’t feel a bit bad about sneaking out early (okay, I really didn’t sneak – in fact, my co-workers about pushed me out of the door) to spend Friday afternoon with J and Ava.
At Souplantation. Again.
While I would have been perfectly content to eat soup there for hours we did also go here:
And can I just tell you something? I did not like Sea World.
Maybe the penguins. They were very cute. And the Beluga whales. They were pretty nifty, too.
But that’s about it. It made me feel very guilty about animals being exploited for our entertainment. The shows with the animal performers left me cold and feeling dirty for patronizing the place. Plus – it was crazy expensive.
Ava was thrilled to see a small Sesame Street themed play area with kid suitable rides. Of course we headed straight there and I simply couldn’t stop myself from making several ‘when pigs fly’ comments…
especially when she handed me a tiny Abby Cabaddy doll and asked if we could buy it. I thought ‘sure’ until I saw the $29 price tag. Needless to say she didn’t get it which set off a tantrum of almost epic proportions in my not-yet-napped kid.
Except she couldn’t even finish the tantrum properly because this happened mid-stream:
So I parked the stroller and sent J off to watch a show with performing seals or something. I’ll spare you the 75 pictures of that. You’re welcome.
We strolled around while she napped, waking just in time to walk into yet another aquarium building full of – guess what? – more fish. She was less than impressed (as was I at this point) so we took her to pet the rays. Yeah, ummm no. J and I did though, until we figured out they were really only interested in the $6 cups of food you could buy to feed them with and that they just automatically assumed there would be food to nibble on in that outstretched hand. Creepy, creepy – I did not like.
Dolphins next. Playful, friendly, almost cuddly dolphins, right? Not so much. There was one who took great delight in coming close enough to let you touch him and then splashing gallons of water on you – and I swear that animal was laughing every single time he did it. It was at this point that Ava threw the.worst.fit that I’ve ever seen from her in public or at home. For real, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and fighting us so hard that I finally strapped her in the stroller and parked us both in a corner waiting for her to yell her fool head off for as long as she wanted to. It is the one and only time that she’s ever tantrumed in public that I really, really wanted to disappear into the floor. J conveniently distanced himself and I don’t blame him a bit. I would totally have done the same if he’d been the one lucky enough to have been present at the start of the fit. I still have no idea what caused it.
I’ll summarize the remaining hours in the park. Even More Fish.
And a whale show. Hated it. She wasn’t thrilled with it, either.
She did tell us how to get to Sesame Street, which was (thankfully) by the entrance, so we let her do a few more rides…
before getting the heck outta Dodge! I suppose I’m glad I’ve been there but I’m happy to say I don’t think we’ll ever go again.
We headed off to Coronado after leaving Sea World. I wanted to see the Hotel del Coronado in person, which I did (National Lampoon style) as J drove past it (Chevy Chase style) before continuing all the way down to Imperial Beach. Our plan was simply to drive until we found something to eat and/or a place that looked interesting so that’s what we did – stopping at a little beachfront farmer’s market right at the Imperial Beach pier.
Oh, it was so quaint and perfect there. We lovedlovedloved it. We ate organic pizza and humongo homemade pretzels from a teeny little shop where the owner makes all the dough by hand. We browsed the little market looking at fancy soaps and organic fruits and veggies and everything in between. There were real live actual functional VW busses around. And surfers! Finally. This is what I imagined SoCal being like.
Ava played on the playground.
And we watched yet another glorious sunset.
The only downside? It was freezing! We only had thin denim jackets on so we left earlier than we would have liked once Ava’s teeth started chattering. I did still manage to get soaked walking along the beach on the way back to the car – guess I kind of forgot about waves and things.
I don’t want to ever live in CA but if I had to I’d want to be in Imperial Beach. A VW Karmann Ghia would also be a requirement for me to even consider such a move. Preferably in pink.
Well, that is what she calls it most of the time. A baseball is a football. A football is a baseball. Whatever.
John waited a long time for this day. The day he took his kid to her first pro sporting event, even if it was only a Padres v. Braves game at Petco Park.
Thanks to my company for allowing J and Ava to use a couple of their season tickets in order to make that dream come true sooner rather than later. And while he may have grumbled a time or two that it wasn’t the Yankees it was free and that counts for a lot.
It was hat day. Ava was stoked!
As you can tell – they got there a bit early in order to park (no problem) and get to their seat. It was an afternoon game during opening week so it wasn’t too crowded.
Ava helped locate the seats.
She also insisted that the temporary tattoo they gave her must be applied NOW.
J complied.
She also gave the umpire heck when necessary.
Of course. she also started giving her Daddy heck, too – right about the fifth inning. He called it a day about then.
Since they were out gallivanting about it gave me the opportunity to work late which was nice. And they were super happy when they finally made it home.
And the rest of the day? Yeah – that was spent trying to get the so called temporary tattoo off of her face. We tried everything and it like to never came off. J finally made a trip to the closest store in order to buy alcohol and baby oil and we were able to remove it, along with the top later of skin it seemed, in about an hour. We learned a lesson that day – no temp tattoos on the face any more!! EVER!