vacation - day 6

Wednesday was a pretty good day. (heck, anything had to be an improvement from Tuesday, eh?) Tim went out in the morning to buy some breakfast and pick up some chocolate to give the sweet lady who helped us get new tickets. After he had left, Holly called to let me know that we could actually get into the park 1/2 hour early! Too late for that - Tim didn't get back until almost 9:30 and we still needed to get everything packed up since we had to check out by 11:00.
After getting everything loaded into the van, we headed back to the parks. We spend 1/2 a day in California Adventure riding missed rides and any repeats the kids wanted. This was actually the first day that our entire family went together on a ride. (the monsters inc ride)
Aaron said his WHOLE vacation would be "RUINED" if I didn't go on the "screamer" (major roller coaster) with him. So I sucked it up and went. OH MY HECK! It wasn't very fun for me. But I did it, and Aaron was thrilled.
At 3:30 we met up with Aaron and Holly again. They were done with the parks and were ready to hit the road. Before they left, the volunteered to take the 3 little kids for a while so I could go on some "big kid" rides with Tim. We took them up on the offer. They love it, since they got lucky and were able to see (and get pcitures with) Pooh bear, Tigger and Eyeore.
Tim, Aaron, and I took off running, hoping to get in as many rides as we could before 5:00. We did pretty well. We were able to pretty much walk right onto Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones. We got to Splash Mountain and found that there was a 50 minute wait time. We got fast passes for that, and then went over to ride the Matterhorn. That pretty much took up all of our time, and we met back up with the others at 5. We said goodbye to Aaron and Holly (I cannot even imagine what a NIGHTMARE this vacation would have been without them there to help out! - THANK YOU!!!!) Then we went back over to ride Splash Mountain. Amazingly enough, Bryan said he wanted to go on it with me and Aaron. (he changed his mind very soon after the ride started however, and he pretty much was terrified the whole time. Oh well.)
We continued to ride "family rides" until the park closed at 8. We were on the Nemo submarine ride (and waiting in line for it) until 8:30, then we had to hike out of the park, swing by Rain forest Cafe to buy Katrina's souvenir (we had convinced the kids to keep a running list of the things they wanted to buy until the last day, then they could pick their very favorite thing...), took the kids to go to the bathroom, and FINALLY at about 9:30 we were in the car and on our way.
We had decided to drive at least a couple hours that night, so we we would have a little jump on the LONG drive home. We looked at prices on motels in Barstow. The best price for a place with a pool was about $70. We found a place in Primm, Nevada for $25. Tim was confident we could drive the extra hour +, so we had booked that one. I wasn't sure we were going to make it. I was so exhausted that I was having a seriously hard time keeping my eyes open. AT LAST - at 1:00am we arrived at the hotel and checked in.

Here are more Disney pictures:

There were a few "murphy" moments during the day, my favorite being when everyone else was in line for Dumbo, and I realized Caleb needed to be changed. I took off the messy diaper, cleaned him all up, then reached into the bag for a new diaper. NO DIAPERS! Um, that is a problem - since now's he's a naked bum boy!!! I looked around until I saw a mother with a child that looked about the same size and bummed a diaper from her.