Pumpkin Slime Means Fall Time

It's the time of year when we get to have our yearly rite of traditional vegetable mutilation and Funnest Ever Family Home Evening activity: The Carving of the Pumpkins. Let me educate you on the proper technique for this family adventure, just in case your skills are a little rusty:

First, you have to do it up right and go to the pumpkin patch to pick out your special pumpkin. It should really be the pumpkin patch run by the little old man who grows them in his backyard and has each one priced with a price gun sticker, but whatever you have nearby will do. Your pumpkin must reflect your personality and age appropriately.

And, luckily, they have wagons there so you can knock over all the piles of pumpkins and pretend you are a dump truck.

Then, you take them home and decide what kind of face you want on it. When the top gets cut off, you can say, gross, these stink! And you can also pull your own seeds out and yell, "Eww, Slime!" If you are doing it right, you should have your copy of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the DVD player for your little sister so she doesn't mess you up.

You can also get sad that dad won't let you use the sharp knife, but you can turn that anger to your advantage by hassling him for twenty minutes to carve your pumpkin NEXT. When they are all scooped out and cut up, you can dump the seeds into your garden and hope that more pumpkins will grow next year in your own yard. And then you find the little candles in mom's pantry and light up the neighborhood with really, really spooky pumpkins. I just love Halloween.

Disneyland: A Review

So, most of you will be totally bored by this review, because I'm sure most of you have already been to Disneyland and really like it. However, if you haven't been in a while, or your kids are too old, or you just think it's not worth your time, (ahem, Anna) let me tell you why you should take a trip to SoCal with your family to visit Mickey's place, aside from the fact that there is a giant talking Potato Head there:
They do everything there on a large scale. Nothing is done halfway, and it always looks like it came out of a movie. Even the Halloween decorations are done by the scenery staff and are really cool.

It is SO clean there. This is a place where millions of people visit every year, and I've never even been in a messy bathroom during a trip there. Look at how clean this sidewalk is. Not a piece of smashed gum or litter to be found. I love clean places.They really get into the make believe in every aspect. This is the Winnie-The-Pooh ride, and every detail, including a heffalump bee slurping honey drops on the back of the car, is present and accounted for. You can try to look for holes in the details on every ride at Disneyland, but you just can't find any. The attention to minutiae in creating an atmosphere is amazing.

There are little photo vignette opportunities everywhere in the park. You can pretty much take a million pictures in a million different places, and they would all be picturesque and lovely. And even if you are too cheap to buy the merchandise, you can always be sneaky and snap a picture of it to look at later.

The realness of the lands that they've created is amazing. You feel like you are really in that movie or that region of the world. You want to live with talking cartoon cars? You got it. If you love French things, go to the French Quarter and park yourself in front of one of the shops. If you love pirates, check out that big ship they have floating in the bayou, or the paddleboat that actually works and takes you on a ride around the lake. How about the Indiana Jones ride? My boys thought they died and went to Lego Indiana Jones heaven in that place. You can't tell the difference between Disney and real sometimes.

Even though I really love trips to Disneyland and I would go there every chance I get, there are a few things that are minor annoyances to me when I visit. First, I don't love how the major attractions end in a gift shop. I totally get where they are coming from from a marketing perspective, but when you have little people who have no self control or concept of money and stroller space, you have to pick and choose your exits carefully.Our trips to Disneyland with little kids are mostly to do one thing: meet the people dressed up in the character suit. However, every time we saw a big character-type person they were either drowning in a huge line or running off because their handler gave them "two minutes, Tigger!" My girls all wanted to meet Sleeping Beauty, but the line to see her was over an hour long. Sorry! Wouldn't be prudent. Could they maybe make it so the characters are out longer so more kids could see them? Or have them come out more times during the day? I'm not asking for much...

All in all, the trip was great. I'm so glad we did it with our kids at these ages. We will remember it for a long time to come and I'm going to put some guilt on my husband to go back soon. It could happen.

A Day at the Beach

There are so many lessons to be learned from beach living. We were only there for a few hours during our trip to Disneyland, but here are the things I realized:

1. There are things in this world that are so big that no man can have control over them. Nor should he. You must simply watch them and admire their vastness. It made me think of my life. There are lots of things I can't control, but I have to make peace with them and appreciate the beauty in them.

2. Stay on the safe side. Don't swim out too far or you might not come back. Another great analogy for lots of wicked things floating around us these days. Or you can be like Sam and stay as far away from them as you can.3. Stick together with the people that matter most.

4. Find something to do with what you have.

5. Be your own you...no one is looking at how you look in your swimming suit. They are all too busy worrying about how they look in their own swimming suits. 6. Sometimes doing something simple and boring is the funnest thing to do.7. You are stronger than seaweed. Get over your queasiness and just pick it up. It's just seaweed. 8. Take time to stop and smell the sea water.I think these universal lessons are why people gravitate to the oceans and lakes of the world. So often in this whirlwind society of today we forget that we are simply people. We can't hold back the tide. We can't change the wind or move walls of water. We can only do so much, and it's good to be reminded every now and again that we aren't all powerful or all knowing. Sometimes it's good to just be. And it's even better if you can be with the people you love more than anything else.

How to Pack for Disneyland...I'm Not Sure This Is It

Getting the chance to finally go on a family trip to Disneyland was a happy turn of events. It was something we had looked forward to for a long time, but wasn't without its share of dilemmas. Aside from your basic "where will we sleep" questions that needed answers, my dilemma was this: how to fit enough stuff for seven people for five days into the back of a Ford Explorer. Along with food for celiac people and stuff to make our lunches because I am too cheap to buy Disney food. For those of you who don't know, a Ford Explorer is great if you are a guy and you only carry around your golf clubs. Which is who my husband is. And since it was his idea to take his car instead of my (much larger trunk space!) car, I figured it would be his problem fitting all the stuff in that tiny trunk, and I would show him why the Yukon XL is vastly superior for people with little people in tow. However, after he reminded me of the fact that my truck needed tires AND brakes, I relented in the name of safety. Thus began the battle of the bulge.

First, everyone only got to take three outfits. One backpack to put them in. One pair of shoes. No toys. No pillows. (Except for the grown-ups, who know from experience that sleeping on a hotel bed is not always good for bad backs.)And one whole suitcase was devoted to food. One whole day was devoted to the packing of the food. I felt like RJ in "Over the Hedge" with all the thoughts of food. Everyone had their own color-coded items: Water bottles and toothbrushes were everyone's favorite color to keep them from fighting or sharing germs. I decided I would do water bottles to save money instead of buying sodas at the park and to save the environment by not taking disposable bottles. I packed detergent and dryer sheets so I could wash clothes along the way. I had a bag for all the stuff you can never find: wipes, carmex, ziploc bags, kleenex, lotion, nail clippers, medicine, first aid kit, camera, etc. It was basically for all the stuff someone asks you for in the car and you dig around in three bags before you can find it. I had a bag for the snack food for the car ride.

I had enough gum for everyone to have twenty pieces, just in case we were bored or hungry or our ears wouldn't pop in the canyon. I packed only Disney movies to watch in the car. I thought that it would be fun to catch up on our old favorites we haven't seen for a while and get excited to see them at the park. This backfired when my Thomas the Train lover went into major withdrawals on the way home.

I found this really cool hard-sided cooler that was small enough to carry around but big enough to pack all our lunches in. I only packed Pringles and Lay's Stax so the chips wouldn't get smashed.

I even remembered vitamins.

My husband came home from work early and started loading the Explorer. I bet you can guess what happened. We barely had room for our clothes and the baby's diapers, let alone my whole suitcase full of food and my cooler of perishables to make lunches with. We didn't even have room for our water bottles and water supply! At the last minute I was grabbing snacks out of the suicase and throwing them into grocery bags hoping kids could hold them on their laps. I had to leave behind most of the things I had spent a whole day preparing. Sigh. We ended up buying lunch and dinner every day and spending a fortune. We also ended up buying water bottles every day and filling our own landfill. Double sigh. I couldn't figure out if it would have been worth the $400 for brakes and tires and $400 extra gas dollars to drive my larger car or the $1000 we spent on food for those five days and the $200 we saved on gas taking the smaller car. I think the most important thing is we traveled safely, had a great trip, and we all spent a great vacation together in each other's company. Even without homemade sandwiches for lunch.