Total eclipse of the heart...I mean sun

For about an hour yesterday, I had all my boys at a park by the library staring up at the sun, watching it be eclipsed by the moon.

Did I play "Total eclipse of the heart" very loud and sing it to my children and husband?

Yes, yes I did.

From our location, it got darker.  We weren't in the "path of totality" and got about 90% shade, but we went from full sun and heat to dusk and 15 degrees cooler.  I totally wish that we would have been the family that drove to see the eclipse.  But, maybe we can do it in 2024.

The boys thought it was cool, when they weren't wrestling and crotch grabbing and rolling down the hill at the park.  Mostly, I think they paid attention only because I told them that we'd get lunch after.  So, thanks, In and Out!

We went to California, Part 3

Well, since the trip had included an event for Ross (soccer), for the big boys (Harry Potter) we figured we'd better do something just for Quinn.  That meant on our last full day of vacation, we would drive to San Diego (and get there faster than it took us to get to Universal) and take Quinn to Sea World.

We'd been watching Sea World commercials on TV for a while, and Quinn seemed pretty into it, but he was so excited once we got there.  He got a map, and we let him direct the day - wherever Quinn wanted to go we went.  We started with the dolphin show, then crossed the park to the penguins and arctic animals, then crossed the park again to the seals and sea lions.  He had us marching back and forth all day long.  We walked more at Sea World than the previous day at Universal Studios.  Phew!

There were some definite highlights of the day.  In no particular order:
Walrus are insanely huge and gigantic animals and it was fun to see one so close.



The boys fed sea lions - they touched dead fish and Elliott had a fish stolen out of his hand from a very daring bird.





We saw a sea lion, killer whale, dolphin and sea turtle poop in the water.  Always a highlight of any boy experience.

Quinn grinned ear to ear the entire Orca show.  Killer whales are amazing majestic animals.  They were my favorite.  I could have sat and watched them swim all day long.







Ross and the big boys rode the big rides - getting soaking wet on one of them and Quinn thought it was pretty funny that his dad looked like he'd pee'd his pants.



The boys touched horseshoe crabs, small sharks and other sea creatures.

The sea lion show was fun and the boys saw baby hammerhead sharks.

One thing that I thought was pretty cool at Sea World had nothing to do with aquatic creatures.  If you buy a souvenir cup at the park, you can refill it for free at any self-serve food kiosk for the entire day.  We bought two $12 souvenir cups (with lids and straws) and easily filled each of them 10 times.  That was a bargain!

San Diego is a great town.  The weather was a perfect 73 all day.  The park wasn't too crowded and the lines for attractions weren't too long.  Sea World is really a great way to spend a day.

We went to California, Part 1

Everything our little family does is done quickly and our vacations are no exception.  In the spring, Ross found out about a soccer game between Manchester City and Real Madrid being played in Los Angeles in the Summer and a trip was born.

We had three days, book ended by half days of travel, to get as much sight-seeing and fun in as we could.  Now, nearly a week later, I'm still tired.

We left on a Tuesday afternoon and I realized that we always leave for vacations, at least when we are flying, and it's really stressful so in the future, we need to leave in the morning or at least mid day, not 4 pm.

We arrived at the Long Beach airport.  We found the house we were renting and I had a mini panic attack that it was too hot and too musty and it wasn't going to work.  After dinner at Wahoo's I calmed down a bit.  It was a cute but very old house with bad wifi, no TV (even though it was promised and yes we complained), and one bathroom.  But, we survived.

Day two had us up bright and early in the morning to head along the Pacific Coast Highway to Crystal Cove State Park Beach.  It's my new favorite.  We had the beach to ourselves for a very long time and the boys had so much fun playing in the water, hunting for crabs and urchins in the tide pools and getting covered in sand.  We wrapped up the morning with a walk up a hundred or so stairs to Ruby's Diner Shake Shack and it wad delicious.  The beach is just so calming and great.












After that, we headed back to the house, got cleaned up and drove into Los Angeles to go to the LaBrea Tar Pits.  Pretty cool.  Smelled like asphalt.  Boys had fun.





We ate a quick snack at the Farmer's Market food place at the Grove shopping center, found a MUJI for me to buy notebooks to my hearts contentment and then headed to the soccer game at the LA Colosseum.

The Colosseum is incredibly old, outdated, unsafe, and gross.  The seats were rusty and had holes and were covered in spider webs.  Quinn wouldn't even sit in his and spent the first half of the game on my lap.  There were also no railings anywhere in the stadium.  When the stairs are THAT steep, and everyone is THAT drunk, you'd figure some railings would come in handy (get it, handy!) .   We however, persevered and watched the game.







We were directly across the aisle from a huge contingency of Man City fans, which made Ross pretty happy.  They were fairly calm the first half and we only endured a little rowdy behavoir.  That was however made up for in the second half.  People without seats in the section were filling the stairs (fire hazard), the 32 oz beers in souvenir cups were flowing and the borderline appropriate songs were being sung.  Once Man City was up 3-0, I convinced Ross that we could leave.  It was a pretty interesting experience and when I left to use the restroom in the middle of the second half, I ratted out all those crazy fans as a fire hazard to the first security person I could find.

Rule follower I am.

The great thing about going to a soccer match that doesn't start at 8:30 pm, when your kids brains thing it's 9:30 pm is that everyone falls asleep on the way back to the rental and minus the fact that the house was pretty warm, slept like babies for the whole night.

Day 1 was a victory!

Spring sports

June is almost over.

The boys last day of school is June 30.

And spring sports?  They just about blew up this tired mama's brain.

Quinn played t-ball with cousin Jack.  Ross was the coach.  He did a great job always trying really hard and I don't think he ever had to use the tee, always hitting one of his dad's pitches.  I was very proud of him, even though he called every game "soccer practice" all season.

Wyatt played soccer on a team with a bunch of friends from school.  He had fun and played especially hard when grandma or grandpa were there to watch him.   He also played kid pitch baseball and it was mostly a disaster.  His team was very small (in stature and skill), very young, and he had a first time coach - recipe for...very LONG baseball games.  Add in all the spring rain-outs, it felt like the season was never. going. to. end.  Oh, and he pitched many innings in many games.  He did his best, and I'm proud of him for that, but this child of mine maybe isn't destined to be a pitcher.

Baseball did, in-spite of everything, end on a win.  The second win of the season.  Want to know something good about being on the bad news bears?  No post season tournaments.

Elliott played spring soccer.  He seemed to be the glue that held his team together, most games only sitting at half-time.  His team had its struggles in the spring, losing two players and their dads who were the assistant coaches.  I'm not sure what happened there, but it's hard to win games when you lose kids from the team and the majority of the rest of the team doesn't come to practice.  But, they ended strong and Elliott did a great job.

I tell my boys the exact same thing before every single game:  win or lose, you need to be able to walk off the field knowing that you did your best.  Elliott has figured this out.  Wyatt, well Wyatt is still working on it.

And, it is indicative of the craziness of spring sports that I failed to take any pictures of Elliott playing soccer; took my nice camera to Wyatt's last baseball game to take pictures and realized when I got there that I left the memory card at home; and managed to get a few pictures of Quinn at one of his last games.







Now - with summer here officially (summer solstice yesterday) we are knee deep in soccer.  Elliott and Wyatt are both on competitive soccer teams for USA (Utah Soccer Association) soccer.  I'm finally getting over the amount of money we've paid for the boys to play - and now I need to get over the summer practice and tournament schedule.

Good thing I like these kids.  A lot!

Travel, Griswold style

No trip in our family is complete without a few hiccups along the way.  Usually, those hiccups are caused by me, and relate directly to me, but sometimes other things happen that make us laugh, or panic, or both.

Here is a run down of the Arizona trip "highlights".

Leaving dinner on Friday night Quinn fell off of a very tall curb and skinned his knee up pretty bad.  He cried so hard that once Ross got him in the car, he was so worn out he fell asleep in about 30 seconds.  It was a pretty bad crash.

On Saturday morning, it was raining pretty hard.  We'd planned to go to the zoo, but the rain made us second guess ourselves and we decided to go to a small aquarium in the mall.  It opened at 10 am, we stood in a long line and once we got to the front, realized that the line was for people who had passes or who had already purchased tickets.  Doh!  Of course, there were no signs indicating differences in the lines, and, once we got to the back of the "need tickets" line we decided to give up and just go to the zoo in the rain.



Lucky for us, the 2 hours we were at the zoo, it didn't rain.  I still spent $12 on ponchos for the kids, but no rain.  We did however have a couple of adventures at the zoo.  Adventure 1: we were chased by a very fast, very vocal, very crazy road runner.  It was roaming free in it's enclosure and it gave us a run for our money, and plenty of giggles.  Adventure 2:  My blood sugar started to drop pretty rapidly when we were about finished - joy of diabetes - and just as I put a glucose table in my mouth, Wyatt came around the corner, excited to tell me there was a whole cage of Scarlet Ibis - my favorite bird.  Well, in my attempt to be excited about the birds, I inhaled my chalky tropical fruit glucose tablet and it got stuck in my throat.  I could not breath.  I was chocking.  For a good 30 seconds, I thought that I might suffocate and die.  Once I could breathe again, my throat was on fire and hurt for the rest of the day.





Saturday night we had tickets for the Arizona Coyotes NHL hockey game against the San Jose Sharks.  The game was supposed to start at 6 pm, but the first 10,000 people were going to get a FREE bobble head of a former player because the team was celebrating it's 20th anniversary.  We arrived one hour early, to get our FREE bobble heads and then had to sit there, with the five other people who came early for an hour before the game was going to start.  The big boys really liked the hockey game, but Quinn?  We were there so early that he fell asleep right after the National Anthem and slept almost through the first halftime.  By the way, hockey games take forever.  Ross said they were fast, they are not fast.  20 minutes of play, 20 minutes of half time, 20 minutes of play, 18 minutes of half time, 20 minutes of play.  We didn't make it for the last 20 minutes because, hello!  We arrived so early.  But, it was still fun.

On Sunday, we drove up north to the towns of Cottonwood and Prescott Valley.  Driving to Ross' parents house in PV, we were following a route outlined by google maps.  Well, that route came to a dirt road.  We paused momentarily to see if Google was serious.  She was. (can google be a girl?)  I told Ross that I thought it was a bad idea to drive on a very wet and very muddy dirt road.  He, being the man, told me we would be fine.  We maybe drove a quarter of a mile before it got really wet.  I began to plead for us to turn around.  We continued a bit more until - yes, you guessed it -we were halfway in a muddy ditch.  Yeah!  I felt justified in my "I told you so moment" but that didn't change the fact that we were stuck in the mud.

Ross got out of the rented mini van.  I climbed over to the driver's seat.  He pushed.  I floored it.  After a few intense minutes, and let's face it, many silent prayers on my part, we got out of the ditch.  But then, because I was driving, I had to do a u turn, on the slippery muddy road and drive us off that road.  Where was Ross you ask?  Well, his head, arms, and torso were inside the van.  His butt, legs and lower half were hanging out the window.  He was a wee bit muddy once we got back to the road and switched seats.  Sometimes, Google leads you astray.

The biggest screw up however was on my part.  Sunday night, while eating dinner with Ross' parents, I realized that I'd left ALL MY INSULIN in the fridge in our airbnb apartment in Phoenix.  Swear words!  I had 60 units left in my pump, enough to get me until the morning and I was panicking.  Everyone was calling or texting people who could either write me an emergency prescription or help me solve the problem.  Finally, Ross was able to talk to the small town PV Walgreens pharmacist and he was sure that they could get my prescription transferred in the morning so I could get enough insulin to get home.

It was.

I did.

The end.

The end of 2016

It's the last day of the current year.

I wrote a letter to send out with my Christmas cards this year, but never finished editing it, and never got copies made.  I did send out Christmas cards though and and Ross' Great Aunt Pat made sure to send a note in her holiday card telling me she missed the letter.  She also called me "Amy".

It's all good in the hood. 

So, being as it's the end of the year and I never sent the letter, it will serve as the final blog post of 2016, along with my accompanying end of year slide show.

The boys and I discussed it the other day and decided that our song of the year was "Hand clap" by Fitz and the Tantrums.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas 2016

As I sit down at my computer and try to figure out the best way to sum up the past year, I sort of draw a blank.  It feels like the last year has been a whirlwind of activities, vacations, carpools, practises and games for all the kids sports.  But, of course, I’ll give it a try, and I’ve got my instagram feed to remind me of all the highlights.

This year we took a great trip to Seattle in June to watch Argentina (Leo Messi specifically) play Bolivia in the Copa America soccer tournament.  We hit all the Seattle sites, drove up to Anacortes to go on a whale watching excursion and ate great food!  We went to Disneyland with Annie’s extended family in October to celebrate her parents 40th wedding anniversary and the safe return of Willie (Annie’s brother) from a LDS mission in Lithuania.  Ross’ parents also returned from a mission in South Africa and spent the Thanksgiving holiday in our home.  We took a couple road trips to and through Las Vegas just so we could eat hamburgers and french fries at Shake Shack.  And, the biggest project of the year, we finished our basement over the summer.  It was a long 9 weeks, but we are so happy to have the project completed and no, we didn’t do it ourselves.  

Ross started a new job in April of this year with a company called Solera.  He is just as busy, doing just as many projects as before, all of them technical and finance related, but luckily is working  closer to home.  He coaches Elliott and Wyatt in basketball, Quinn in soccer, and is a great dugout manager for any of the boys baseball games we are attending.  This fall, Ross was released after 5 years as scoutmaster as his church calling and was given a new calling as executive secretary to the bishop, keeping him very busy on Sunday’s in meetings.  Oh, and lest we forget, he spends what little free time he has (about five minutes) playing fantasy football and obsessively checking the ESPN and WOOT apps on his phone.

Annie is continuing to be a stay-at-home-mom with the boys and staying busy being their tutor, coach, short order cook, nurse, classroom volunteer and everything else that comes along with keeping three growing boys from starving every day.  Some days, she drives back and forth from the elementary school 6 or 8 times.   She continues to make and sell tote bags and lots of other stuff at local boutiques and seems to always have one too many projects going on to keep her sane.  This spring, Annie switched over to an insulin pump for her Type 1 diabetes and it’s made all the difference in the world.  Like Ross, Annie  also got a new church calling in the fall switching from a three years tenure teaching primary to a position as the secretary to the young women’s organization working with 12-18 year old girls.

Elliott will be turning 10 in January and is in the 4th grade, in his 4th year of Spanish dual immersion.  He is nearly fluent in Spanish speaking and is above grade level in reading and writing en Espanol.  He’s growing like a weed, and by next year at this time, may be taller than Ross’ mom.  He is turning into a really great kid and a  pretty responsible one, too.  He’s pretty goofy, but takes his school work, mine craft, ipod, fit bit and Pokemon very seriously.   He plays competitive soccer in the Spring and the Fall and basketball in the Winter; regularly helps cook dinner; has become an obsessive reader; plays the trombone in the school band; and mows the lawn.

Wyatt is 7.5 years old and will be turning 8 in May.  He is looking forward to getting baptized in the Spring.  Wyatt plays soccer, basketball and baseball.  He is a really good baseball player.  He is fast and smart and has a great time.  At the end of this past season, he was chosen to be the “all-star” representing his team   Wyatt is in the 2nd grade and also in the Spanish dual immersion program.  He is a very talented artist patiently coloring complicated designs and paint by numbers; he loves to listen to music and identify all the instruments being played; he sings and dances, plays nice with his brothers, and is a perfect, straight A student.  In fact, his Spanish teacher, Senora Gonzales told us at the most recent parent teacher conference that she LOVES him.

Quinn is 4 years old and the crazy sparkle of our family.  He loves Pokemon and dinosaurs and his favorite movie is Jurassic World.  He sings and dances and talks all day long.  He loves to draw and color and practice writing his letters and numbers.  Quinn goes to preschool three days a week, just finished his first season of soccer, where, surprisingly, he was exceptionally aggressive and scored a dozen or so goals.  Quinn makes us laugh all day long, is pretty sarcastic for a 4 year old, and would live out on the trampoline, no matter the weather, if we’d let him.  Or at Target.  The kids loves to go to Target.  I can’t complain about that one.

time passes quickly, doesn't it?

It's been over a month since my last blog post.  Funny isn't it how time just marches forward, whether we pause to document it or not.  It's nearly Christmas however, and the end of the year and I probably don't want the final blog post of 2016 to be me whining about, what is proving to be, a really horrible election outcome.

Anyway, November.

November went by so quickly.  The boys were off-track for three weeks, even though Quinn still had school three days a week.  The month was eventful and uneventful all at the same time, if that even makes sense.  We had our fair share of ups and downs in such a short four week period.  We also had a really rough 11 days or so, right in the middle of the month where chaos reigned supreme.

In an 11 day stretch of November the following things happened.

*Ross parents returned from the 18 month mission to Africa to our home.  They stayed for 8 days.

*Wyatt broke his toe and had ear infections resulting in a late night Insta-Care visit and some antibiotics.

*We went bowling.

*We hosted a small Thanksgiving with a standing rib roast that Ross prepared and a smoked turkey, we bought from a bar-be-que joint.  The food was delicious and my parents and Willie came by later in the evening for dessert.

*I sewed my heart out for a holiday market in, Holladay, right after Thanksgiving.  Set-up, volunteer in a blizzard and take-down all in a three day span.

*In 11 days, we attended, in some combination of family members, three or four Utah basketball games.

*We got a flat tire on our way to a cousin's baptism.  Luckily, my dad and Willie were close by and they came to help with the tire and take the boys with them to the baptism.  Ross and I headed to Costco to try and get the tire fixed, but because the tire shop was booked up for the rest of the weekend, we had to wait until Monday to repair the tire.  That meant we got a teeny tiny rental car from the airport that, I hit my head on the hood every time I got into it for a couple of days.

*The same day as the flat tire (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) I had a rough day.  Any combination of factors could have caused it, but I had climbing blood sugar all day long and finally, around 5:30 or 6:00 pm that evening, Ross took me to the emergency room because my blood sugar had spiked to 546 (normal is 120).  I cannot say I remember a lot except that I was cold (probably because of the IV), my speech was so slurred that I couldn't talk, and my body was heavy as a rock.  After a few hours of fluids and insulin, a blessing from my Dad, Willie and Ross, I was released to go home.  The next day, Sunday, I felt miserable, like someone had kicked me 50 times in the back.  I couldn't stand up straight or concentrate, and my speech was still slurred for most of the day.  It was a pretty pathetic experience.

*We purchased nine sub-for-santa gifts and helped out a sister missionary at the MTC from Madagascar.

*Quinn stopped sleeping and went completely insane....after a few nights of feeling like we had a hysterical newborn, Ross took him to the doctor, and he too had ear infections and a sore throat like Wyatt the week before.

*I volunteered with a neighbor to clean the temple in the middle of the night.

*I sewed and sewed and sewed for another Christmas show in Provo.

*We got out and set-up all our Christmas decorations.

*Play dates with friends were arranged.

*Off-track was survived (barely)

*Went back to school and had a band assembly.

*Driving to IKEA on Bangerter, a rock found it's way into my windshield.

*Saw Jim Gaffigan at the Delta Center.

It was a lot for a small 11 day stretch.  Ross and I were so tired and worn out from all the commotion, extra people, illness and food preparation and consumption that I still don't think we've recovered.  I made this list on Instagram a few weeks ago and my mom commented that I should look at it not as everything that happened, but as "holy cow, look how much life you still accomplished in spite of all the drama."  She is right.  Even though everything fell apart for eleven days, we still managed to get all our things done.  Our house was clean, our children happy, everyone was fed and watered.

I guess rather than a list of stress, in hind sight, I can look at it as a list of productivity.  Even under pressure, we can get stuff done.  And that, that's a pretty good feeling.

#BoompaGoesToDisneyland :: Mickey's Halloween Party

So, for our third day, we didn't have a plan for the 12 of us.  We decided to let our kids sleep in a little, which they did.  But, we missed breakfast at the hotel, which stressed Elliott out.  Nothing a giant cookie from one of the Disney Bakeries couldn't fix however.

When Elliott and I had a minute, just the two of us in the morning at California Adventure, we talked about important Petersen things - like walking.  I told Elliott that he may be a Howden in name, but he is also a Petersen.  And being a Petersen means lots of things, but at Disneyland, it means we walk fast.  He knew exactly what I was talking about.  I told him that Uncle Willie calls it the "art of the dodge and weave".  There maybe isn't anything more annoying at Disney than people who don't know where they are going and stop right in your path.  Elliott was blessed with longs legs for a reason.  And, he is learning how to use them!

Anyway, CA Adventure was a mad house!  Absolutely stifling with people.  We got some fast passes, hung out in bugs land for a bit and then high tailed it over to Disneyland.  We were a little grouchy, a lot hungry and super stressed out.  The goal was to get a picture of all 12 of us in front of the giant Mickey pumpkin that morning, while our matching t-shirts were still clean.  Getting everyone at the same spot was a big tricky.  But, we did it, and then splintered again.

Grandma Judy set up shop on a bench for the parade - which at the time was 2 hours away.  Willie and I enjoyed a conversation with Mr. Lincoln.  My mom has the best job at Disney...she sits on a bench, people bring her food, and she hands out money.  I aspire to her job one day.  At one point, all the big boys (including Wyatt) headed back to California Adventure to ride Tower of Terror a couple of times.  My mom, Haley and I along with Molly, Jack and Quinn hung back to eat popcorn and watch the parade.

Note:  My children drank almost more Diet Coke than me on this vacation.

Finally, it was time to take a small break and do some souvenir shopping and get ready for the day's main activity:  Mickey's Halloween Party.

Long story short: Worth the extra $80 per person.  We will do it again.  We may never go to Disneyland ever again EXCEPT in the month of October because being in the park with 30,000 people instead of 100,000 is so worth the "price of exclusivity" (Ross' words).   The ambiance was awesome, the rides open with no lines and the fireworks were very cool indeed.

We did not manage to see the parade - tired kids and an early morning drive home were waiting for us, but the stressful morning we' had getting everyone together melted away as we wound down the day.

#BoompaGoesToDisneyland :: Hot and Sweaty

Day two at the parks saw us heading into California Adventure for the coveted Cars ride fast pass.  We got it, but the park was super hot and crowded and we hadn't made a really good day two plan, so we floundered a little.  We did the Monster's Inc. ride, which never has a line and sort of wandered around.  Eventually, we ended up indoors and ready to watch Dude Crush at "turtle talk".  I absolutely love listening to crush and am amazed at the technology.  The best part, Crush picked my dad to talk to.  He called him, "Carvin' Karl" or something like that and teased my dad about the possibly too causal way he might swim.  It was pretty funny and a great time.

The rest of the day morning we just sweated, ate churros and fought the ginormous crowds.  The temperatures got up to a sweltering 95 degrees and it was just sticky and miserable.  So, after we all rode on Cars, it was to the shuttle, the hotel and off to the beach!  We put the kids in their suits and Quinn had a rest on our drive the beach.

I think it's mostly because of my mom's obsession with the Beach Boys and all historically California ideals they generate, but our beach of choice is always Huntington.  The pier is cool, there are always surfers, and we can head to Ruby's Diner for dinner - ice cream first.

The beach was a total energizer for all of us, especially the kids.  The only time Quinn cried on the whole trip was the beach...the ocean was a little too big and windy for him, but I was more than happy to hold a squishy kid wrapped in a blanket on the beach.

After our time at the ocean and one of the most spectacular sunsets I've ever seen (seriously, it was divine) we headed back to Disneyland.  We stayed until 11.

The highlight of the evening was our family of five's ride on the Jungle Cruise in the dark.  I didn't know that they ran the ride in the dark, but it's much more fun than in broad daylight.  The boat captain shines a spotlight on the animals and is a little more loose with the script.  Our captain was Juan.  He was maybe the funniest tour guide I have had on the jungle cruise in my life.  And not only was he funny, but, we saw a LIVE RACCOON on the ride.  It totally freaked Juan out and he went off script for the rest of the ride he was so flustered.  It was the best.

Then, we went to bed!

#BoompaGoesToDisneyland - entering the park!

All of us arrived at the hotel in Anaheim at different times on Friday night.  We had a quick team meeting in my parents hotel room and then it was off to bed.  I mean, when your early entry day to the park is your first day, you need your rest.

Ross and i woke up at 5:30 in the morning.  We were all meeting at the shuttle stop at 6:20 am, so we could get into the park right at 7:00 am and ride as many rides as we could before it really started to get crowded.  

First ride: Peter Pan.  Then the rest of fantasy land.  Then, the group splintered, as expected with the "riders gonna ride" and the "sitters gonna sit".  We spent the next three day sin multiple combinations of family, taking turns with the littles.  My mom and I were pack mules, hauling all the crap that belonged to us.  Haley hauled most of her crap in a backpack on her back and a bum bag on her bum.

The weather was VERY warm and in the afternoon, we all started to melt a little.  Nothing that a nice lunch in Downtown Disney couldn't fix.  And, bugs land, in California adventure sure saved the day on the first day.  The kids could just get on any ride they wanted and it was shady and cooler than anywhere else.

By the early evening, Quinn was desperate for his main souvenir of the trip, a giant Buzz Lightyear.  Once I got it for him, and grandpa opened it for him, Buzz didn't leave Quinn's sight for the next three days.  He called him his, "special friend" and never let go.

On the first night, we left before the fireworks with three very tired kids.