California Vaycay

Back when Soph and E-Man were 2 and 1 (it was, in fact, the week of E-Man's first birthday), we took a beautiful vacation to a beach house at Laguna. It was a fabulous week of playing in the sand, walking the enchanting streets, eating ice-cream, swimming in the "tiny swimming pool" (as Soph called the hot tub), and BBQ-ing on the deck while watching the sun set over the ocean.

During that week, we also spontaneously swung over to Disneyland for one day. Both of our kids were free (under 3) and adult passes were $45 each (only a few years before that, passes were $30). With parking, it cost $100 to take the fam to Disneyland. That seemed like a ton of money to me then. I could entertain my kids every day for a year with $100 when they were that age.

We've been back a couple of times, always taking advantage of the Get Away Today package deals, so that two 3-day-adult-hoppers are included, the kids passes are discounted, and there's a free night included at the hotel -- or something like that. It's always seemed like a pretty good deal.

This time around it was a real eye-opener to see how much Di$neyland tickets have gone up in price. We had our "free" trip, so a lot of the cost was comped. I can't complain, but, man oh man has the Di$neyland Man gotten greedy.

Now, to take our family to Di$neyland for one day (this doesn't include parking) is $315. And, if we want to upgrade those to hopper tickets, the cost goes up to $390. And, that doesn't even include the $70 we spent on treats (we were cheap and took a huge bag of food inside, yet we still spent that much . . . and, we didn't even splurge for the $3/bottle water to quench our extreme thirst. We just walked around all dehydrated drinking from the lukewarm water fountains).

Am I the only one who thinks that $69 for a one-day or $94 for a one-day hopper seems like a bit much?

I must be the only one, because, despite our best efforts to go on a random Monday in October to avoid the crowds, that place was bursting with people. Economy going bust, what?

I digress . . .

This is really meant to be a post about our fun family vacation. And, fun it was.

Friday, we drove down to St. George. My sister-in-law's parents live in a condo right across the street from the finish line for the St. George Marathon. We stayed with them last year and they were so incredibly nice (and the location beyond convenient) that we decided to do it again. We were, once again, thoroughly spoiled by their hospitality.

There was a headwind and showers during the entire marathon. Photoguy finished in 3 hours and 27 minutes, his slowest for this particular race (3rd run), and not Boston qualifying. He still felt good about it given the conditions.

This was his 6th marathon since Boston (in April). Now he says he is on a roll and wants to do two more before the year's end (8 in '08). All the marathons are over in Utah for now, so, we'll see what he comes up with.

After the marathon, we drove from St. George to Anaheim (with a stop at In-N-Out Burger when Photoguy's appetite came to him) and checked into our hotel. The sad part was that there were no kid suites or any kind of suites (I was hoping to upgrade to the classiest budget suite on the block), but the happy part was that there were three pools plus two hot tubs and really nice gardens with shrubbery trimmed to look like animals by the pools. We got there in time to take a dip the first night. And, I will never forget how, lying in our room in the dark, long after I thought the kids were asleep, AiAi burst out singing, "Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof, woof, woof."

Sunday, we headed to Laguna (it's become sort of a tradition). We got there right as high-tide was coming in. I have never seen the ocean so rough before. Giant waves crashed, and the surf sometimes traveled to the most remote edges of the beach, eventually even touching the boardwalk (as we discovered after all of our towels and things were soaked three different times). We spent $3 on parking, and $15 on overpriced sand toys at a novelty shop on the beach. We had at least as much fun as Di$neyland, and the food at Ruby's Diner (another tradition) was even better and only $45 including tip (I'm sorry, I know, I know, I really need to let the high-priced Di$neyland thing go, just seems so appalling . . .). Photoguy likes Ruby's for the juicy hamburgers (with healthy turkey patties), and I love their awesome salads.

E-Man LOVED the ocean, a nice change from his fear of the waves at age one. He even got knocked over by the rushing surf three times and still kept playing in it. Way to go E-Man! Soph was a bit unnerved by the surf knocking her down and all the sand in her swim suit. She is usually the one standing waist deep in the waves while the rest of us look on. I hope she finds her love of the ocean again by the next time we visit. AiAi kept his distance, but had a grand time chasing the seagulls with a shovel and plowing around in the sand.

At dusk, it was back to the hotel for another dip in the pool. I think swimming in the hotel pools was the favorite activity for all three of our kids (I think they liked it even better than Di$neyland). And, a few loads of laundry (when you add up stinky marathon clothes, peed in p.j.'s, and an armload of beach towels reeking of salt water, you see why it had to be done).

The next day, we woke up bright and early and prepared ourselves for Disneyland. True to my die-hard Disneyland reputation, we boarded the 9 a.m. shuttle (though the park didn't open until 10 a.m.), I waited in line for tickets while Photoguy waited in line to enter the park. We were among the first visitors -- on Main Street with 3 minutes to spare -- and cheering with the crowds as they played loud music and opened the park for the day.

The park was decorated for Halloween, which was cute. When we went when the kids were really small, it was decorated for Christmas and that was amazing.

It was pretty crowded. I guess I didn't get the memo on the Miley Cyrus birthday party on Sunday. I think the crowds were a holdover from that. Also, apparently it was fall break in Arizona (met lots of nice folks from Arizona). Ah, well. We tried. But like the time we accidentally went on Tuesday that happened to be part of a random four-day weekend for school kids in the state of California, once again, we hit it when it was busy.

We still got to do most of the things we wanted to do. Photoguy was unsuccessful in talking our kids into riding Splash Mountain (they've ridden it before and haven't gotten over the terror embedded in their hearts from the final downhill). I thought it was very un-Disneyesque when we went to visit Minnie Mouse. First, we waited in line. And, then we were told that Minnie was out for 15-minutes, could we please come back. So, we visited Mickey first and went back. But, right as we stepped into line, a worker cut us off and said that Minnie would be leaving, could we please come back. At that point, Photoguy said to bag it and we hopped on the train to head to New Orleans Square. Turned out that station was closed, so we accidentally rode the train all the way around and back to Toon Town where we started. It was lucky for our kids so they could meet Minnie, right?

We stood in a very long line (this was the third attempt too, mind you), and right before it was our turn, they came and whisked Minnie off leaving dozens of children standing there shocked and disappointed! I couldn't really believe it because I've come to expect superb treatment at Disneyland (one of their truly redeeming qualities). At that point, we had to wait in yet another line at another location because our kids HAD to meet Minnie. Quite the ordeal.

The new Nemo ride was cool, and Soph and E-Man (recently converted Star Wars fans) loved Star Tours. And, those $4 Mickey ice-cream bars really were quite tasty. The park closed at 8 p.m., so we made it back to the hotel in time to swim in the pool before bed.

The next morning, we grabbed one more swim before checking out and driving all the way back to Utah. We hadn't planned to do the whole drive in one day, but, we were making awesome time. It was only about 10 1/2 hours in the car start to finish (I thought it was a minimum of 12). And, we didn't stop much because our kids were awesome!!!

In all, I would say it was a pretty balanced vacation. One day at Disneyland is not enough. It was kind of like a Disneyland teaser. But, it was nice to visit the beach and nice to have enough downtime to do what is really important to the kids -- swim. I remember one trip we took consisted of 5 days in a row of theme parks and the pool went unvisited in all the mayhem. So, this was short and sweet, but, lots of fun!