Disneyland/Big Bear Vacation

Seth had his vacation week the first week of February. We decided to do a stay-cation of sorts again, and did a couple of days at Disneyland, followed by a couple of nights in Big Bear. 

We had talked about taking Taft to Disneyland for his birthday, but ended up buying annual passes to Disneyland instead. (Gulp. They were not the cheapest thing we ever purchased.) I think it will end up being a good thing. We've already spent a total of 3 days at Disneyland, and I'm sure we'll go enough to make it worth the price. 

The boys both had a blast. We did California Adventure the first day, and checked out the new Cars Land first thing. It is SO adorable. They've completely recreated the town from Radiator Springs and I just died at all the detail. The boys liked seeing the Cars characters, but didn't go nuts for them either. In fact, they didn't really care too much about any of the characters in all of Disneyland. The would point them out, but didn't want to have their picture taken with any of them. 

I must say, I think I have a love-hate relationship with Disneyland. I love that all the workers are over the top happy, that it's a magical place, but I super hate crowds and boy, does Disneyland have crowds. I just think it is completely unreasonable to expect a small child (or even parents for that matter) to wait 45 minutes for a silly Dumbo ride that last 2 minutes. I know, Bah Humbug right? What I'm saying is, if we didn't live so close, I don't know if I'd make a trip just for Disneyland for my kids. Unless they had a crazy Disney obsession and going there would make all their dreams come true. In that case, I'd go. Probably. 

However, I love that Disneyland lets one parent ride with two kids on a lot of the rides. This makes it so much better when I go by myself with the boys. Legoland is not like this, which makes it pointless to go without Seth. 

Anyway, enough about me. Here are some pictures of the day. 

Taft laughed hysterically on this ride. I wish I had it on video.

The Toy Story ride. A family favorite.

These crazy boys. Throwing their hands up on the ferris wheel.

Day 2: Disneyland side. The happiest place on Earth right? It is pretty happy there, I must admit.

Are they not twins?

Luke insisted on being with Seth on every ride. Taft was nice enough not to complain, even though we all know he would have had some turns with Dad. 

After two days in Disneyland, we headed to Big Bear Mountain outside of the L.A. area. We got in to town in the evening, settled in to our hotel, rented skis and such, and got some grub. Bright and early we headed to Bear Mountain Resort so Taft could start his snowboard camp. We had signed Taft up for an all-day group class from 8:30 to 3:30. I was hesitant to sign him up for such a long day, but we decided we'd just check on him at lunch and if he was over it we'd take him out. He ended up being the only kid in the class so he had a private lesson all day and had an absolute blast. He loved his instructor, Adam, and just had a great time. It was really cute watching Taft get pumped about snowboarding once he tried on all his gear at the rental shop. We would have rather had him take ski lessons since that's what we'll do as a family, but he had to be four. Yes, only a month shy and they still said no. 

Seth and I took turns going on runs. It was the firs time I had skied in 5 years! I was a little rusty but took it easy and stayed on greens and blues. The weather was PERFECT for my kind of skiing. Sunny and mid to high 40s. This was the first time I've been skiing that I haven't been miserable with painful fingers and toes. 

Against our better judgement, we took Luke up on a couple of runs in the hiking backpack. Eventually someone told us we weren't allowed to do that, so we stopped. We decided to get Luke some skis and Seth took him down the bunny hill a few times. Luke was content just to be pushed around on the flat snow wearing his skis and helmet. 

I have several videos from our ski day, but turns out that my camera is too new for our version of iMovie so I can't upload it. Normally I could just upgrade iMovie, but apparently our computer is too old for the new version of iMovie. Grrrrrrr. 

There was a story that happened in Riverside that made national news while we were in Big Bear. Some of you probably heard about it. A disgruntled former LAPD officer shot and killed three people over the course of a couple of days, one of them being a police officer. The shooter, Christopher Dorner, was trying to "clear his name" for the reasons why he was let go from the LAPD force. He wrote a super long manifesto and said he was planning to kill multiple officers from the LAPD. The morning we were leaving we saw this "breaking news" in our room on the news and that there was a multi-county manhunt for this guy. As we were driving down the mountain heading home, we saw multiple police cars, armored vehicles, etc. heading up the mountain. We wondered if they thought the shooter was hiding in Big Bear. When we got to the bottom of the hill we saw police cars parked, with officers out of their car holding rifles!! It was crazy! Later we found out he was in fact up there. Police were unable to locate him exactly for a few days, but did eventually find him in Big Bear. CRAZY. 

We finished off the week with a half-marathon that I had been training for. The training paid off and I beat last years time by 8 minutes. Woop woop! That night we got a sitter and had an early Valentine's dinner and movie. So basically, we had a really great week.