May Adventures

I was afraid I wouldn't be very good at keeping my blog updated. So, in an effort to "catch up" here's some of our May adventures.

Aria went to her first hockey game and Melodie had a tap recital. My best friend got her Masters in Social Work. I had a nice Mother's Day (Melodie and I went to a church Mother/Daughter activity the day before).

Aria and I went to Disney's California Adventure quite a few time because my annual pass expired this month. This is my FAVORITE picture from all our visits.

Once Upon a Time is one of my favorite TV shows. When I saw that the last two episodes were entitled "Second Star to the Right" and "Straight on Til Morning" I knew a season finale party was in order. Everyone brought fairy tale themed food.

 

My best friend had to go to San Luis Obispo for the weekend and Aria and I went with her. Road Trip! The bubble gum wall in SLO is icky. I found the cutest little place called  Avila Valley Barn. Aria and I spent a beautiful afternoon there.

Aria is 3 months old!

 

It was a very busy month with so many fun adventures!

Peter Pan Magic

 I'm not sure when this started. I like to joke that it was here:

After all, if you hate the villain that much, you must love the hero. That's me, less than 1 year old, with my dad at Disneyland. Obviously I'm not feeling the love for Captain Hook.
 It was actually sometime in jr. high or high school when I read the book by J.M. Barrie. I liked it but at the time it wasn't my favorite.
 When I started high school I met the girl who would be my best friend for the rest of my life, Cindy. At some point we decided Peter Pan was our favorite Disney character. My best friend says, "we related to him." We really liked happy thoughts. And the idea of flying. And not growing up. We bought Peter Pan hats and actually wore them.
 When I moved away, we kept in touch. I shared my love of Peter Pan with my new little siblings.

It definately stuck the most with Megan. A few weekends ago she came down to So Cal to go to Disneyland with a friend. I got a call that she saw Peter Pan in the parade. She cheered so loud that he came over to give them all high fives. I was so proud. First, I taught them at a young age to cheer for characters during a parade because they will acknowledge you. Second, although she doesn't love Peter like I do, she thought of me.  After high school I moved back to So Cal. We worked at Disneyland (she was first, I followed). This meant a lot of our paycheck went straight back to the company because we bought anything with Peter Pan on it. Since we got in Disneyland for free, we watched Fantasmic! a lot. There's an amazing section with Peter on a pirate ship (this scene is not in Fantasmic! at WDW, which seriously leaves it lacking).

We would cheer like crazy during this section.
 After we both left Disneyland, we still sought out Peter Pan related things. My favorite Peter Pan movies came out in 2003. It starred Jeremy Sumpter. If you haven't seen this version, you need to.

 In 2007 we went to the El Capitan in Hollywood to see Disney's Peter Pan.

We went the first night, so there was a panel discussion that included animators and the character voices.

It was thrilling to meet Kathryn Beaumont, the voice of Wendy.

 I waited until my daughter was 1 for her first visit to Disneyland. Our first ride was Peter Pan's Flight.

 In 2010 an amazing show came to So Cal. Peter Pan 360 was one of the best shows I have ever seen.

  

We even bought tickets to a behind the scenes tour.

 So why am I thinking of all of this now. Last night Cindy and I took Melodie to her first real musical she'd been to other made-for-kids-so-they-were-short plays). We were thrilled that Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby was in our area. We were excited. I debated for a while on whether or not to take Mel, but I thought it would be perfect if Melodie's first musical was Peter Pan. We dressed up for a night at the theater.

We arrived early knowing we needed a booster seat for Mel and that we'd want to buy some merchandise. I ended up buying a program, a Peter Pan glow stick, a magnet and a Tinker Bell necklace for Melodie.

We had seats in the orchestra level (which Cindy and I don't normally spring for).

There's nothing like the moment when Peter Pan flies onto the stage. Cathy Rigby (and the rest of the cast) did an amazing job. It was fun to watch Melodie (who does know some of the music since I listen to it quite often). She did NOT like the pirates (actually found them quite scary). But that was fun too. Her reactions were amusing to watch.

Her favorite part was the very end when Peter Pan flew over the audience and the croc chased after Captain Hook. It was a very magical night.

CANMT Trip: NCCIL, Peter Pan, Dallas Temple

 After Frontier Texas! We went to The National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature (NCCIL). The exhibit in the gallery while we were there was The Fantastic World of Dan Yaccarino. I had prepared Melodie for this by checking out a bunch of his books from the library. "Unlovable" is one of my favorites. The only character Melodie knew from his books was Oswald. She knows the Backyardigans from TV, but I felt she'd enjoy the center more if she was familiar with the stories.

A volunteer greeted us and said we could join the school group that was on a field trip if we wanted to. Melodie said no.

We started walking around the gallery, but every time we moved Melodie almost started crying and hid behind me. She kept saying she didn't want to go with the group of kids, and I kept telling her we weren't. It didn't matter. She started crying and saying she was shy (she isn't). This went into full blown meltdown as I took her out of the center to the car ("I don't want to leave!" she was screaming). We got to the car and I let her get it out of her system after yelling at her "I was not taking her to the group of children, so I have no idea what your problem is!". She'd done so well on this trip. I was surprised that it took this long for a meltdown. Then I noticed her lip was bleeding. We all had very dry skin from the wind and her lips (despite all the chapstick applications) were so cracked that the upper one started bleeding while she was crying. Surprisingly, taking care of that calmed her down and we were able to go back in to look at the rest of the gallery. There was also a room of books to look at.

I was thrilled that there were Robert Sabuda books to look at. Our library doesn't carry them and they are always wrapped in plastic at book stores.                                 
 I'm glad we went to NCCIL. It was small, but it was free. I love books and I was thrilled to share that with Mel. Dan Yaccarino's paintings were amazing.
 Now we were on our way to Murphy, TX (where we would be visiting our friends), but there were still two more stops along the way.
 I'm not sure how I found this. It seems that if there's something to do with Peter Pan, I will find it. Sure enough, while planning the trip I found out that the city of Weatherford, TX was the place where Mary Martin was born. I can't tell you how many times I've watched my VHS tape of her as Peter Pan. Turns out there was a stature of her as Peter Pan in front of the Weatherford library. Since Weatherford was along our route, we stopped for some pictures (after I changed into one of my Peter Pan shirts).

 

 Melodie played on the computers at the libraries for a little while and then we were on our way again. Before long we arrived in Dallas. We live in So Cal, but the freeways in Dallas were crazy. And there was a lot of construction. Our GPS did not do well. We got a little lost a few times, but eventually we arrived at the Dallas Temple.

 We walked the temple grounds enjoying how beautiful it was.

 

We tried to find someone to take our picture, but there wasn't anyone around. So we tried to take a family shot by ourselves.

And finally people started coming out of the temple. Unfortunately the doors are at the very back, so we weren't able to get a picture in front of the temple. So the picture is us by the side of the temple, but at least we got a family picture!

 We were almost to Murphy! A few more wrong turns and we were finally at the Gamlen's house. Melodie, Jason and Cassie were soon playing like they had never been apart and I LOVED girl talk and catching up with Jennifer. I think poor Rocky was just waiting until Josh came home. We started laundry (Thank you Jennifer! We did soooo much laundry.) and made dinner.

Soon the kids were in bed (and so was Jennifer). Rocky and I stayed up talking with Josh. He was so busy at work we were very thankful for the time he was taking off to spend with us (and his family of course).