Day 4 of the vacay, and TubaDad just disparaged our ride strategy for the day (Sunday recap)

He says we didn't do enough today. What he really means is that we didn't go on any blow-your-head-off rides (like that insane robotic arm ride* he went on yesterday at LegoLand), which is just fine by me. The girls and I think we did plenty today, and my throbbing feet are proof that we covered some serious territory. Highlight of the day for Ro and Ree: Hands down it was the cotton candy. They've been wanting it for days, and we just didn't get around to it, for, um, one reason or another (! cough cough freaking sticky and messy cough cough !). Anyhow, sorry Minnie and Mickey, running into you was fun, but it just didn't hold a candle to the delightful sugary pink puffs of air. Ro is in the first pic, Ree in the second: It was cool to run into a few characters, though. We were cruising through Toon Town and saw a massive line for Minnie's house, which there was No Way we were waiting in. So we told the girls to just wave to Minnie and got ready to walk on by, when suddenly she walked out of her gate and right into the girls' arms. Bathroom break maybe? Then we moseyed through Mickey's house, and checked out his stuff. I made TubaDad pose with Mickey's tuba, and he was a good guy and humored me (that last phrase probably sums up our entire relationship, heh heh): Then we went to the back of the house, and there was Mickey, with no wait at all (yessss!!). The girls danced with him a little and then squeezed his nose. (They do that to every character for some reason. They are just obsessed with those hard bulby noses.) A sweet lady in Toon Town offered to take our picture so we actually got one with all four of us! Oh, and in case anyone's wondering about the outfits the girls have worn on this trip, I chose the shirts and they picked the rest—pants, skirts, leggings, socks, hair accessories, jewelry, shoes, whatever. We snuck onto a deserted It's a Small World ride during the parade, only to have Ro nod off in mid-ride. It's pretty loud in there, so this is a serious testament to how tired the little party girl was: We had dinner with the Family H, and the sea of red Disney attire amused me, so I had to take a pic: Then we ran back over to California Adventure with the intention of riding Soarin' (which the girls rode on Friday with Tim and TubaDad and LOVED; Ree's quote was "That was cooler than cool!"). Anyhow, the line was too long, so we distracted the girls with a blinky seizure-inducing souvenir and headed back to the hotel. Ahhhhhh. My feet are up as I'm typing, and I'm actually going to get this post up in time to hit the sack at a reasonable hour tonight. * You might wonder why I'm linking to a video of some random woman riding that thing instead of TubaDad. Well it's because I completely screwed up on the video record and it was off when I thought it was on. Arghhhhhhhhh!

LegoLand. Wow. (Saturday recap)

On Saturday, we all drove down to San Diego to visit LegoLand at the Family H's suggestion. I was a little dubious about making the long drive. I mean, really, we were just minutes from Disneyland, why should we hop in the car and drive an hour to get to another amusement park? Oh man, I was so wrong. LegoLand was awesome! There were no crowds, and we could actually park in the parking lot and walk the teeny, short distance to the entrance (if you've endured the garage maze, escalators, and tram into Disneyland, you understand why I'm raving about this). The whole park was done in bright, happy primary colors, they served vegetables and rice in the restaurant, and the rides were so dang clever that we just grinned the whole time. (Ro left, Ree right) First stop: the cars the kids could drive by themselves. They were presented with mini driver's licenses afterwards. In this pic, Ro was passing a boy who was apparently going way too slow. Little lead foot takes after her mama... H2 (left) and S2 (right) were quite serious about their racing: This life-sized car was made of Legos!! Little cutie (Ree) waiting for her helicopter ride: This face is quintessential Ro. If you've spent any time around her, you've seen this smirk: Crazy cool helicopter rides. Riders controlled the up/down and right/left: Ro quickly figured out she could reach the controls better with her feet: The fact that D2 (far right) is unintentionally mirroring the Lego dude with the camera just kills me: It's a darn shame these four didn't have any fun together. Hee! If they had let adults ride this one, those kids would have had to fight me for a place in line. The horses bobbed back and forth and moved along a huge track: TubaDad went on the insane robotic arm ride, the one that violently flipped him around and upside down (yes the one I screwed up the video on), and the crowd was awed and then full of joy that he actually lived through it: I don't know what they were talking about during this popcorn-sharing break, but I bet it was funny: We went on a bunch more cool rides and stuff: And then had a quick stroll through MiniLand, where they have entire cities meticulously replicated in Legos. It was getting cold and they were closing, so we walked briskly through here, or at least we tried to: Alright, that was Saturday, Day 3 of the vacay. I wrote about Saturday evening in the post "It was total twinsanity," in case you missed that one.

Six twins and lunch with the princesses (Friday recap)

On Friday, we started the morning with a quick and very disorganized hotel room move. The entire floor smelled like cigarette smoke and we just couldn't take it. So after breakfast we repacked everything (a huge drag) and moved up two floors: We hightailed it to the park, and this time went to the California Adventure side. The girls were fascinated by the huge stone letters out front. Ro in pink, Ree in red: Once inside, we immediately hooked up with the Family H and then were lucky enough to run into three characters who were milling around. Ro and Ree couldn't believe it! And they grabbed each character's nose -- and got scolded for it by each "handler." Which didn't deter them a bit. Yeesh. Their buds H2 (left) and S2 (right) didn't want to get too close to the six-foot tall creatures, but were happy to watch Ro and Ree, and gleefully welcomed them safely back to the fold once all the nose grabbing was done: The girls all got to do their first pin trades inside California Adventure. They thought it was a fascinating concept. Have you heard of it? You buy a lanyard and starter pin set in any of the shops, and then any time you see a cast member with a lanyard, you can ask him/her to trade pins with you. Bugland in California Adventure had some really cute rides for the little folks. Highly recommend it. You can see that they all hated it. Heh heh. At the bumper car rides, we met up with Amy, Tim, Katy, and Julia! By the way, you could offer me a million dollars and I still wouldn't be able to tell you who was who in this first photo. Anyhow, then we had three sets of twins at 3-years old, 4-years old, and 5-years old, and it was a hoot. (Back row L to R: Julia, Katy)(Front row L to R: Ree, Ro, S2, H2) At lunchtime, we herded the kiddos into Ariel's Grotto for a princess lunch. The six girls were pretty enamored. I love how Katy is staring raptly at Ariel in this photo: It kind of amused me that my girls were eating or chewing in every single princess photo op. Seriously. The paparazzi (TubaDad at far left, Tim in the middle, and D2 at right) cracked me up too. (Hey I'm easily amused!): After lunch (I think I did more talking than eating, actually I know I did), we ran the kids around on the huge obstacle course and Ro and Ree nearly peed themselves when they were told they were too small to go on this combo tire swing/zip line. It was dang cool. Anyhow, we took a picture in the hopes that BobBob could whip something up in the backyard that was kind of close? And we did a bunch of cool rides. Well that's the Friday wrapup, from day 2 of our vacay. I still need to catch up with two more posts from Sat (LegoLand) and Mon (the final day and the drive home)—what a slacker...

It was total twinsanity (Fri and Sat preview)

We just got back to the hotel room, we were gone for 12 hours today. Yikes! I have a million-and-one adorable pictures from yesterday (California Adventure, Princess lunch, Disneyland, and more) and today (LegoLand and dinner at Amyesq and Tim's). But you know what? It's just not gonna happen. I'm thinking that I just need to admit defeat regarding timely blogging for this trip and instead promise one highlight a day and a really spectacular pictorial wrap-up when we get home. (Also, D2 is somehow managing to get all the words and pics up each day, so if you'd like to see some great details on what we've been up to, check out his blog, I know my mom is. Heh.) So yesterday's highlight was getting to hang out with two twin families who are truly fun people. We met up with the family H (D2, K2, S2, H2) and with Amy & Tim and their spunky twins "the Jokers" (Julia & Katy). Then we roamed around California Adventure, went on some neat rides, explored Bugland, and thoroughly twin-tested the best bear playground we have ever seen. Wow. It was called the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, and Ro and Ree were in climbing, risk-taking, scrambling, sliding heaven—BobBob we have pictures of everything that the girls want you to build in our backyard. Just giving you a little advance warning. We all had lunch with a whole bunch of princesses, too. I screwed up when Ro was talking to Snow White and I asked who her favorite princess was, thinking it was SW. She glanced over her shoulder and the sweet lady in yellow and said "Um, not dis one." Oops. Anyhow, the day was fun and funny. (L to R adults: K2, D2, Me, TubaDad, Tim, Amy) (L to R kids: H2, S2, Ro, Ree, Katy, Julia) Today we went to LegoLand -- which, by the way, is insanely cool. Maybe my new favorite amusement park. Then, after a seriously action-packed day, Amy and Tim invited us all over to their house for dinner. We were suitably horrified and immediately tried to convince them that the damage and mayhem six twins would commit would be horrible to behold. They persisted, so we jumped for glee and headed to their house for what turned out to be a scrumptious dinner and the toddler-version of an all-night rave party. You think I'm kidding. The six twins took to each other like a house on fire, efficiently doled out fancy costumes and accessories, then had a big ole ice skating show/dance party. We all had to "sign in" on some big paper before we were allowed to watch it. I took a bunch of pictures (while I was holding the camera at hip level and laughing my butt off). And I don't have any time to edit them all pretty... So here they are, raw snapshots of the toddler rave: The girls were all having such a good time I don't know how long we would have been there if we didn't drag them out to the car. It was crazy. You should have seen the grins, and the twirling, the accessorizing, the outflung arms, and the careening across the slippery floor. Man. Those little ladies sure know how to party. When we left, TubaDad said to Amy, "I'm sorry my girls trashed your house." And that really said it all, I guess. We thought Ro and Ree would crash instantly on the hour-long drive back to the hotel, especially since they hadn't napped, but they hung in there the whole way, talking so much that we finally dialed Wela on the cell phone and let them talk to her. (Wela, I'm really sorry about that 22-minute late-night call.) Yeesh. They just kept passing the phone back and forth and saying things like "Dis is Ro now, are you still der? Ok, well..." and then launching into another never-ending story. PS: A bunch of folks asked about the car lapdesks, we wrote up a bunch of details and pics here, so check it out. Jessica asked where we got the playroom bookcases, they're combo storage units/bookcases, and we got them from Pottery Barn Kids. And I got several questions about the new bedazzled, light-up shoes the girls are wearing, they're Skechers TwinkleToes Groovy Baby shoes and are HUGE hits.

The girls are asleep and I will be in five minutes

We met up with some of our favorite people down here at the land of the mouse, D2 and K2 and their beautiful twins H2 and S2 (from the blog No More Work Than One) and did a few hours of Disneyland just minutes after we all blew into town. It was really fun. And I have some great pictures, but just don't have time to load them all up because I am so very sleepy. Before I nod off, here's a quick and hilarious (to me at least) slideshow that shows what it's like to try to get one measly little phote of two extremely active sets of twins actually looking anywhere in the vicinity of the camera, I could barely take pictures I was laughing so hard. I know the phrase "herding cats" was tossed around, and probably a few more choice ones that really shouldn't be repeated. They were moving around that elephant faster than my slow little purse camera would refire. Tomorrow there will be another set of twins added to our group. That's right, we're calling it The Disney Twinvasion of 2010. Does anyone want to place a bet right now on whether you think I'll be able to get a picture of all six girls actually looking at the camera or if you think I'll get a shot of the six backs and butts instead? I know which way TubaDad is betting...

Did we really do all of that in one day? (Thurs recap)

Yes, yes, I'm a day behind in my blog posting, oh well. Here's what happened yesterday. (Was it only yesterday? Unbelievable.) We started on the road trip at 8:29am, which is incrediblyamazinglyearly for our family: Then, ahem, after we turned around and retrieved something that I left at home, we restarted the trip at 8:35. Crimony. The lapdesks worked like a charm. I had stuffed them so full of goodies that we barely heard a peep out of the girls the entire trip. Oh, and we didn't even have to break out the Grey's Anatomy DVDs until the last hour in stop-and-go LA traffic. They're watching one of the shows in this pic, and for the folks who asked, their two favorite shows are the one in season 2 where there's a train wreck and the person comes running into the ER holding a severed leg and Christina says "I want that leg!" and the one in season 2 where the elevator doors don't open and George has to perform heart surgery in the elevator. Ah, good stuff: There was snow on the grapevine. SNOW!! Holy cow: We got to the hotel, threw our bags into the room, and jumped right back in the car to go see D2/K2/H2/S2. Poor folks had arrived only minutes before we descended upon them and then asked them to come out immediately for a little late-evening Disneyland. The kiddos were all game, and we had so much fun: It was so great to be there when there were NO crowds. Wow. We hardly waited in any lines at all. This might be a good time to mention that Ree is in the purple, Ro is in the pink, S2 is in the pink dotted skirt, and H2 is in the black leggings: The first ride was a rocketship that went pretty high in the air if you ask me. Yipes. We hadn't taken the time to unpack the D300, so all the pics tonight were taken with the purse camera, which struggled a bit: We also hit the carousel (see both sets of twins holding hands?): We took advantage of the light crowds to get on the yellow submarine ride (don't know the real name, but that's what Ro calls it), rode Dumbo once or twice (it's all starting to blur together), and Ro and Ree also got really brave and went on Mr Toad's Wild Ride and the Pinocchio's Daring Adventure. That just wouldn't have happened last year. Tiny little adventurers are just eating up Disneyland this year. They've already asked if we can stay 10 days. Next up, Day 2 at Disneyland, our first full day at the park. I won't get that post up tonight, because that pillow is calling my name, but here's a little teaser: Night all.