In the Beginning

After weeks of preparation we finally started our long anticipated trip to Disneyland and Utah. We woke at the bright and early hour of 5am. I had forgotten how early the sun comes up, the beauty of room darkening shades. We didn't hear too many protests from the kids. I think thoughts of Disneyland was enough to keep them quiet. Fefe refused to fall back asleep the first hour, so we fell back on the old trustworthy big blanket to shade her from any visual stimuli. This did the trick! The kids decided they wanted to see the redwood trees so we detoured from our usual I-5 route. Hwy 199 and 101 have got to be the windiest roads in America. I'm not usually prone to motion sickness, but those roads were enough to nauseate just about anyone. We stopped in Eureka for lunch and ate at a McDonald's from the dark ages. It sure made me appreciate our McDonald's back home. We successfully filled our tummies at least and continued on down to the redwoods. We stopped at the Shrine Drive-thru tree. I think it is less popular than the Chandelier drive through tree, but it had some other sights to see beyond just driving through. Our car was too tall to drive through with the car topper anyway.

Brother B:

Ephant:

Climbing down from the second floor:

Our visit to the redwoods only lasted about 1/2 an hour and then it was back to the windy roads. I was pretty relieved when we finally met up with I-5. J and I slept pretty well the previous night so we ended up driving about 15 hours that first day. Our various diversions kept the kids happy. I bought 2 new DS games, rented a couple redbox movies and had Ephant and Brother B bring along a couple books. We experienced massive blessings in that Fefe, who was sick all last week, was so happy. She barely cried at all. She slept great and when she was awake she spent half the time laughing for no reason or making some pretty funny babble. I was worried about how she would be feeling so this was a great load off of my shoulders. J and I had our ipods and we also listened to one of O'Reilly's books on tape. Thank heaven for modern conveniences.