Anniversary Trip

Did you miss me? Did you miss these blogs? Many people have asked me why I stopped doing the blog (by many I mean two). Life has just been in the way. With work, boys, being on a school board, Autumn, and life in general, it has been crazy busy the last month. Everytime I sat down to punch out a couple of hundred words to fill you in on the happenings here, I found myself feeling guilty about not doing other things that needed to be done. By the time it got to evening, I was too tired to even think about blogging. I have some more Connorism’s stored up, some laundry pics saved and Lego of the Weeks I’ll get to but for the next little while these post are going to be spaced out more. So without further ceremony, here is an update.

I could tell many stories from the last three weeks since I last posted about Connor’s wanting to hit himself with a frying pan but I’ll focus on the biggest event that happened to us in October: 15 year anniversary. October 9. 1999 (wow that was last century even) Mandy and I were married. 

For the last 15 years I have been wondering if today is the day she wakes up and realizes how much she was short changed. To date I’ve been lucky. In 15 years we have moved 8 times, had six cars, two dogs, countless attempts at fish, one cat and most importantly two boys. To celebrate we decided to take our first vacation away that didn’t include the boys. So what did we decide to do: Disneyland of course. Yes I have been indoctrinated with the purple grape juice that is Disney. I had two conditions on going there for an anniversary. We had to fly and we had to stay at a Disney resort hotel.  So with bags packed boys in tears, and airplane tickets in hand we left on Thursday for Disney.

Plane ride and getting hotel happened with no incident. Unless you count making fun of the guy drinking coffee and baileys and two bud lights (just on the way to Vegas) and then two Jack and cokes on the way to Anaheim, all before noon. We arrived at the Grand California Hotel without incident. Ladies and gentlemen, staying at the Grand was amazing. Piano music in the lobby, mints on the pillow, turn down service in the evening and a rotating shower head. Yes I am easily impressed but it really was an awesome experience. 

We had our anniversary dinner at Steakhouse 55 (WOW BEST STEAK EVER, best chocolate desert ever), drinks at Trader Sam’s (KRAKTOA! Two people will get that joke. Ask Mandy and she’ll tell you) and seeing a model of Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Friday was early morning in the park, Trick-or-Treating in the park, and closing the park down. That’s right 7Am-midnight at Disneyland/California Adventure (well there was a two hour break at the hotel/hot tub). After about 8PM when the normal park goers had been kicked out and it was just the Trick-or-treating it was five minute wait times on rides all night. We ate ourselves sick, rode until we bored and had a ball. Saturday was more of the park with Mandy, myself and 200,000 of our closest friends. It’s a good thing we were able to do everything we wanted on Friday because Saturday was crazy busy. It wasn’t too bad, we relaxed, took it easy and took awesome ride pictures and drank mint juleps:

We made it an early night in the park, headed back to Trader Sam’s only discover it was THE place to hang out on a Saturday night. We headed back to the hotel and the bar there. We had a couple of drinks there by the fire and relaxed. It was fun, it was recharging and we were glad to come back to the boys. It was a different experience to be at the park without our kids but we had fun nonetheless.

It was Rapunzel's Fault

I don’t usually condone violence, in fact unless it’s sticking up for yourself or family or whacking a car “with some stadiums seats because she almost hit you as you walked across a crosswalk then it’s acceptable but not necessary. Connor is another story.

Connor loves to rough house. Alex and I are the targets of drive by tackle hugs, (Mandy being Mom is exempt from these. He learned that lesson on his own) frequently. They don’t hurt and he’s not being mean, he just loves to rough house it up. One of his favorite activities is to climb up my back (while I’m sitting), sit on my shoulders, and then fall back or slide off my back. This was cute and fun when he was 3-5 but at a healthy 7 age, it’s beginning to wear thin. “No wrestling on the couch” and “Connor stop tackling your brother” are heard almost on a daily basis here. The cost of having two boys fairly close in ages I guess. I think back to what my brother and I used to do in the house at that age and it’s not so bad. Homemade basketball hoops(inside), jumping from landing to landing as we came down the stairs,  mini-hockey games with racquetballs and the mini-hockey sticks we would get from the Golden Eagles games. There were more than one broken vases or holes in the wall as we grew up. As I enter this phase with our two boys I only have one thing to say: “Mom I’m sorry.”

All of this has a point. Last week Connor received some news. His Aunt came over to drop the news that she was getting married. This is Connor and his reaction was, well, Connor. “I am so excited. I’m going to knock myself out. Someone hand me a frying pan.” Now I wasn’t home for this exchange. Mandy relayed this to me later that evening. After laughing and shaking my head I started to think of where this could have come from. They don’t watch Looney Tunes. They used to watch Tom & Jerry and their Grandparents house (Classic love the cat and mouse), but they haven’t watch that in over a year. Then a thought hit me like a, well a frying pan: DISNEY. Tangled. He loved that movie. The girl with the frying pan, then the horse using it and then at the end when the whole Royal Guard has to start using them, yup I blame Disney.

 

 

PS Those last two lines were sarcasm. Please don’t tell Walt or his offspring.