Christmas Vacation 2014

On December 11th Christian went with his scout troop to the senior center. They sang to the grandparents and brought cookies.

Buddy had made his cookies with my mom while I was chaperoning Faith's Honors English field trip to watch Scrooge at Hale Center Theater the day before.

It turned out that Tony was so jealous of my visit to Disneyland, that he planned a last minute family vacation and only told the kids the day before. Even though Faith felt sick the morning of the 14th, she powered through and got on the plane.

We found a great deal on a motel, Park Vue Inn, on the Hotel Tonight app. It's where hotels offer last minute deals to fill up the rooms that would otherwise be left empty. We dumped our DelSol reservations and only paid $89 per night. This place even had parking and hot breakfast included.

We checked into the motel and headed over to Disneyland to pick up our passes. We had gotten tickets after Tony wrote an email after our last visit because so many of the biggest and best rides were closed, including Indiana Jones which Christian was so looking forward to because he was finally tall enough. Much to our surprise, they offered us free two-day park hopper passes, each.

At the ticket booth, Tony asked how much it would be to purchase a third day, and they said it was impossible to add to free passes. When the employee punched it into the computer, he said "Whoops, I clicked the wrong button and accidentally gave you three-day passes. But if you tell anyone , I'll deny it ;)"

It was late afternoon by this point, so we rushed out to Huntington Beach just in time to enjoy the beach and a spectacular sunset.

We ate dinner at Souplantation again, but this time Buddy filled up on dinner and could only got one ice cream cone.

On the 15th we spent the day at Disneyland.

We split some Monte Cristos for lunch and Faith felt pretty good until early evening. We headed back a bit earlier than we hoped, but figured she would feel better by morning after a good rest.

Unfortunately, she felt worse :( We spent the 16th in the hotel room and took her to see a doctor at an after hours clinic. She had an asthma attack while there and said she couldn't breathe, but her oxygen level was high. They couldn't find anything wrong with her since the urinalysis and strep tests came up clear, and figured it was just a stomach virus.

She felt a bit better on December 17th, so we spent time at both California Adventure and Disneyland.

Christian had, of course, found something at every souvenir shop along the way that he just had to have and we told him that he could keep all these things in mind and select something at the end with his money. He was particularly desperate when he saw a bubble gun just outside of the little mermaid ride. He started bawling and throwing a fit, and just as we were starting to exit the store, the clerk asked if he could just give Christian one! Obviously, not a great thing for correcting his behavior, but he was sure thrilled with it. Not only was it super fun, it was a Disneyland miracle!!

We all shared a giant smoked turkey leg for lunch that day. Faith kept having episodes of not feeling well, so we would sit on a bench or trade off taking her back to the hotel room to rest.

The 18th was similar in that Baby didn't feel great, but still had some fun at the parks. That evening, the kids picked their souvenirs with the money given to them by their grandparents and Tammy. Faith chose this gorgeous hoodie with silver glitter park attractions,

and Buddy chose this magic set from the magic store on Main Street. At first we tried to steer him towards something that had Mickey or a Disney icon on it, but he really loves magic and ended up enjoying and getting really good at the tricks for this set!

We also had to get our traditional fancy caramel apples :)

December 20th was the last day of our trip, so we got ready and headed to the airport. Unfortunately, there were not enough seats on the flight for us to get a ride home. 

We drove around and finally found a beach which didn't have scary looking homeless drug addicts wandering around it, and it just so happened to be a dog beach where pets could be off leash. It was fun playing on the beach and also watching all of the dogs splashing in the surf and playing in the sand.

Went back to the airport and tried to make the next flight, but bad luck struck again. We ended up having to drive the rental car home, which was extra bad because Faith started feeling worse :(

Even though the traffic was practically at a standstill up to Vegas due to being a Friday late afternoon/evening, after that we made good time and got home by early the next morning.