vacation - day 4

At this point of our vacation, we picked up an extra member of the family. His name is MURPHY, and apparently he has his own set of laws we had to play by.

Monday morning we got up early and finished loading the van. The plan was to be on the road by 7, so we could be at Disneyland by 9am to meet our friends, Aaron and Holly Burgie ...
(Insert Murphy)
We had all the kids in the van, had said goodbye to everyone, then Tim (luckily) noticed that Bryan was missing one shoe. We searched and searched - for 40 minutes. Finally Tim found the missing shoe, we said goodbye all over again, and off we went. We then hit the San Diego, Monday morning, 8:00 rush hour traffic. I called ahead to let Holly know we were going to be an hour later than planned, and we set the GPS (new toy for this trip) to take us to "Disneyland Resort." Because I still didn't really trust the GPS, I had out my "old fashioned" map and I determined that I thought we would get off on Katella Ave. Instead of doing that, we followed the GPS. It took us one exit PAST Katella, then we got off. We could see Disneyland over to the left, but the GPS sent us right. then left, then left again - - BACK ONTO THE FREEWAY!!! What in the world.....????? Then right there in the middle of the freeway, the good ole GPS says, "you have reached your destination." Um, I don't think so!
We got off the next exit and took a few more wrong turns before finally finding our way to the intersection of KATELLA (you can probably hear the "I told you so" clear from there, eh?) and Disney Way. We arrived at the hotel, and we were actually able to check in early. That was nice, but I felt bad because Aaron and Holly had already been waiting for a long time, and moving us and all our gear is no small task. (Not to mention that Caleb had thrown up during the drive so I had to take the time to clean up the car seat and change his clothes...)
FINALLY - I would guess 10:30 or 11:00 - we headed to the park. We went to California Adventure first. Things were going okay, until I think it was Katrina's 4th ride... Grizzly Rapids. (for you Utahans, it is very similar to Rattlesnake rapids at Lagoon) Aaron wanted to go, so the Burgie's and I took Aaron and Katrina. (Bryan was just a hair too short...) Katrina was excited for about 2 seconds, then she was terrified. She cried and clutched onto me the ENTIRE ride - and for the new few days she remained terrified of any and every ride that had water!
We decided to go to eat dinner early, since Holly had read online that the park clears out just a bit during while everyone goes to eat. (between 5 - 7 I think, or maybe it was 4 - 6...) We figured if we ate early, we'd get the benefit of shorter lines while everyone else went to eat. We went to the Rain Forest Cafe in Downtown Disney. My family had never been to a Rain Forest Cafe ande we had been pretty excited about it. Tim, Aaron, Aaron, and I thought the "rain forest ambiance" was great, but it made Caleb, Bryan, and Katrina very nervous. There were some animated monkeys above our table that would come to life and swing. Every time they did, Bryan would freak out. Caleb started crying before I could even start eating, and he wouldn't calm down. I took him outside and after a few minutes he finally calmed down .
Aaron B. finished eating and he came out to find me and volunteered to stay with Caleb so I could go eat. I was about to take him up on the offer but decided to try Caleb inside once more. He did better this time and ate a little bit. The other kids went with the Burgies to explore the rest of the cafe while I ate. Katrina only made it a little way away before she came running back. An animated gorilla had scared her... Oh brother~
Back to the park we went, and we split up. Aaron and Holly went over to do Tower of Terror, Tim and Aaron went to Grizzly Rapids, and I took the little kids to bug land. Tim and Aaron met us in bug land after they were done and went on a couple rides, then at about 6 we decided to head over to the Toy Story ride that we had wanted to ride before we went to dinner. We got there, only to find out that the park closed at 6! No new people allowed in line. If we had known that... we wouldn't have gone to early dinner. we would have stayed in the park! Oh well. by this time we were EXHAUSTED, so we decided to call it a day and go swimming back at the hotel. We got changed and went down to the pool. The kids had been so excited because the pool had a little water slide they could go on. We got to the pool, and almost immediately, the life guard announces "the water slide will be closed in 10 minutes! For crying out loud! what is up with this day? Katrina was still too shaken up from Grizzly rapids and wouldn't go down the slide. (I expect that with more time she would have warmed up to it, but we didn't even bother trying with only 10 minutes.) Aaron went down as many times as he could in the 10 minutes, then that was the end of that. We stayed in the water for a while, then went up to bed. The kids were just beat and feel asleep almost instantly.

Here's some more pictures: ( I know it looks like a lot, but I promise, it's really just a small sampling...)