AZDonna

Lauren is doing so much better than a couple months ago. She is no longer having the night terrors/seizures and is running around the house. But best of all, she is singing again. Maybe just a line or two at a time, but you can hear the tune and make out the sounds of the words. And last Thursday, she said “Poppa” and “Daddy”. She hasn’t said a recognizable word in several months. This is a real comeback!

She’s got a new pillow top mattress that is more like the one in Brian and Carrie’s room and they are introducing her back to her own bed. So far, so good. Looks like life is getting back to normal at the Reed’s.

We’re home! It’s hot! ‘Nuff said about Arizona.

We had a good time in Disneyland. As I said in yesterday’s post, I kept making mental notes of things to blog about all day. I’m not sure how it happened, but we might have gotten lost in the Disneyland parking lot. We entered on the east side, and paid our $12 (yikes!) fee. The cheerful attendant told us to follow the signs around the park to the parking structure on the west side, where we would catch the tram to the entrance. We followed the road, and eventually found ourselves back at Ball Avenue. We had to make a U-turn back into the parking garage. But apparently, that is the only way to get there. Several cars were on the same route, and we even looked for another way when we came back in the afternoon after our hotel break, and there simply isn’t one. Seems like Disney would address that, or close the east entrance and just route everyone into the garage entrance from Ball Rd.

The park was really crowded, but the ride lines were not bad. We had a lot of fun in the morning, and along about 11:00, Glenda got a text message from a friend of her daughter’s who works for Disney. He is one of the web designers for disneyland.com. He had just found out we were at the park and wanted to meet up with us for lunch. We met him for lunch in Downtown Disney and afterwards, he walked us back over to California Adventure where he got us park hopper tickets for free! We had been dying to ride “Soarin'”, but didn’t want to spend the extra money to do both parks. We actually had a ton of fun in C.A. and spent several hours there. We rode “Soarin'” twice and several other rides including “Toy Story”, which is the newest ride at Disney. It’s very similar to Buzz Lightyear, but in 4D.

When we came off “Soarin'” the first time, we were looking the map over and a Cast Member stepped over and asked us if he could help us. We thanked him and explained we were just figuring out where the rides we wanted to check out were located. He grabbed my map and proceeded to give us a complete description of each and every ride in the park. I rolled my eyes over his head at Glenda twice, tried to gently pull my map back from him, considered being rude and walking away, but in the end just stood there and took it. After all, he was just trying to be helpful, but he went overboard just a bit. No, actually a lot!

We were plumb tuckered out by 10:30 and decided to call it a day. On our way out of Disneyland, we stopped to take a quick look at the 50 Years of Disney exhibit, and it was fascinating. They had a map of Walt Disney’s original concept of the park which included Mickey Mouse Island and Lilliputian Land. There were old ticket books, lots of photos and documents, and a model of the Space Mountain track without the mountain. It’s quite a mild roller coaster when you see it that way. It’s truly the dark that makes it so exciting. We stayed to watch the movie (hosted by Steve Martin and Donald Duck) and it was one of the highlights of our day.

We slept like logs last night and didn’t wake up until 8:15 this morning. We got on the road around 11:00 and finally started our audio book, The Pillars of the Earth. We only got through 4 of the 32 CDs, but it is so good we are both definitely going to listen to the rest of it on our own.

We took I-10 all the way home and didn’t get lost once.

We have had two great days. All along the way, I’ve looked for things to blog about, because I know no one really cares about our window shopping or which rides we went on at Disney.

We got up early on Monday and drove over to Coronado Island to walk around. We strolled through the hotel trying to act like we belonged there. It is so cool along the beach there, because the hotel has a boardwalk (okay, it’s a cement sidewalk, but it’s right along the beach) that meanders along the edge of the hotel and we had fun imagining what the inside of all the condos and cabanas were like. It was a very overcast day, so the ocean didn’t have a lot of color and it was quite cool. In spite of that, there were several groups of people heading down to the waves.

After a Starbucks and pastry, we headed up the coast to San Onofre State Beach to pay a visit to the campground hosts. We arrived at the entrance to the park around lunch time, and an hour and a half later we were at their site. They are 104 sites down the road at 15 MPH! (just kidding … it didn’t take us quite that long!)

We had a great time sharing lunch with Richard and Dianna (thanks so much!) and then took a little(?) hike down what they termed the “easy” trail to the beach. Whew! It was about a 75° angle down the side of the cliff. We made it safely and then walked along the beach checking out the different areas that Richard pointed out.

There were a couple of surfer camps going on and we watched the surfer dudes for a while. It looks like a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work! We climbed back up the road (which was still steep, but not as difficult) and after saying our goodbyes, we went on up the coast highway to Newport Beach. Richard had given us a suggestion to drive along Highway One instead of keeping on the interstate like our mapquest directions, and it was a delightful drive through the beach cities.

We went out for dinner and headed to bed in preparation for our big day at Disney. Now, two days later we are ready to get on the road back to Mesa, so my recap of yesterday will have to wait until I get home. Arizona, here we come!

Just when I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to have anything interesting to blog about today, we had a silly episode.

We got on the road at 7:30 and made it all the way to San Diego on one tank of gas! I paid $4.01 for gas in Mesa last night, and $4.53 in San Diego this afternoon. But I guess if we can get that good of mileage, it won’t be too bad.

We checked into our hotel and decided to hop the mass transit system to go over to Old Town. We wandered around there for a bit, and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Then we thought we’d take to train down to Seaport Village and walk around the shops.

It seems Glenda and I are up to our old tricks of getting lost. Combine that with our learning curve on using the MTA, and we got ourselves in a pickle. We took the blue train from Old Town down to the America Plaza station and waited for the orange train to take us to Seaport Village. Well, the train came along and we hopped on, and suddenly it made a loop and headed back the same way we had just come. Yep, we had gotten back on a blue train and were headed back to Old Town. At the next stop, I jumped off to see if we could switch back to what we wanted, and Glenda stayed on the train waiting for my word. The moment I turned around to signal her, the doors closed and she was off down the track! I mouthed “I’LL WAIT HERE!” to her and she nodded. It took me about 20 seconds to remember we both have cell phones, so we weren’t lost from one another forever. I called her to ensure we both understood the plan and waited for her to get off at the next stop and come back to meet me.

We did finally make it to Seaport Village where we walked around window shopping for a bit. We’re back in our room now watching TV and surfing the internet.

Glenda and I are heading out on Sunday morning for a short trip to San Diego and up the coast. We’re just going to hang out around the shops down in Old Town on Sunday, than take a slow drive up the coast on Monday, stopping to see Richard and Dianna at San Onofre State Beach. We have a hotel in Newport Beach for that night. We’re going to get up early and try to hit Disneyland on Tuesday if the weather is nice. It’s supposed to be in the mid-high 80s all week, so that should be perfect.

Disney is definitely a kid’s paradise, but once in a while it’s really nice to do an adults only visit. Glenda and I had a blast at WDW on our big trip three years ago, so we know we are compatible in the Magic Kingdom. We can do such grown up things as visit the 50 Years of Disney exhibit, take a coffee break in the mid-morning and a hop over to the hotel in the afternoon for a swim and a nap, and go back later to watch the fireworks without worrying about grumpy, tired out kids. Don’t get me wrong, I love visiting Disney with my kids and grandkids, but this is just to say I’ll somehow try to have a good time without them this week. 🙂

We’re going to stay in Santa Ana (R & D’s old stomping grounds) Tuesday night, and head home mid day on Wednesday. I have 130 hours spread across 13 audio books on my iPod that we can listen to via my car radio. We’re going to start with “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett and see if we like it. If we do, we’ll only get about 1/3 of the way through it on the trip. It’s 41 hours! If we can’t get into it, there’s plenty of others we can try.

It’ll be great to get out of the smoldering heat and feel the ocean breezes.

Channel 12 News was at L.I.F.E. last week doing a story on the Arizona special needs scholarship program, and one of the reporters gave Nathan a microphone and “interviewed” him. He very clearly explained that kids with special needs could come to LIFE, and their brothers and sisters, if they were typical, could come be examples. Then they went into the stimulation room and turned on the bubble machine. The reporter asked Nathan where the bubbles came from and Nathan answered her, “That’s an excellent question! And one I don’t happen to have the answer to!”