"Shannon and the Boys" do Disneyland - Now a full-on Trip Report!

[Brady's Mom]

I was at my parents house on Sunday for a family gathering and one of my sibs coined the new phrase "Shannon and the Boys". Since I am the ONLY girl in a houseful of boys, it seems to fit. I told him we sound like a band.

Onto our trip. This trip has been in the works since this past Feb. We have friends who like DLR as much as we do - although he has family there and stays for free and gets discount tickets - and they went to DLR in Feb. While they were there they agreed to pick up our NEW AP's from Costco for us. Well, that made it necessary for us to plan a trip to activate them. They have to be activated before May 31. Sooo, we planned for the Sunday during Memorial Day weekend since you can activate AP's and get in on a blackout day.

We were going to be there from Sun. May 24 to Fri. May 29. Got the Ent. rate at HoJo and we were set. We were planning on driving early Sunday morning (about 4 AM) and getting to Anaheim about 3 or so. It is kind of a long, boring drive - but it is do-able, especially since our youngest is 4 and a half!

More of the SAGA in a little while - I have to go wash the dirty boy in the bathtub.

 

[Brady's Mom]

About us.
I am Shannon - a SAHM, I teach piano lessons 2 afternoons a week, Muay Thai kickbox at 6 am 5 days a week, drive boys to all of their various activities and take my kids to Charter School - since I am not a very organized/motivated homeschooler!

DH is Francis - he is the IT manager at a Mental Health Facility and loves his job. He has some fun hobbies that include smoking meat. He has 7 barbeques in the backyard. But, the food is YUMMY! He loves DLR as much as I do and loves to be there with our kids. Although, for his 50th birthday in July he decided to go to DLR instead of San Francisco and chose the Mouse over a SF Giants game and Wicked tickets. AND good Chinese food - which we have a really hard time getting in Utah.

Our oldest DS - Alex - is 20 and currently living in Taiwan for about 9 more months.

Second DS - Jeff - is almost 13 and can't wait to finish school tomorrow for the summer. He also takes kickboxing and some other Martial Arts. He is the one that I spend the most time driving around. He is finishing up 7th grade.

3rd DS is - Brady - he is 7 and finishing up 1st grade. He is a runner and loves to do all things track related. They had a *golden tennis shoes* competition at his school this past year and the kids ran at recess to earn/keep the shoes. He would regularly run a mile and as many as 5 in 1 to 3 recesses (20 to 60 minutes total). He set up a long cardboard tube in our back yard last night and was hurtling it.

DS 4 - Nathan - is the firecracker in our family. He has always acted bigger than he is. He was trying last night to hurtle the same tube as Brady. While he was running back around to hurtle the tube again, he ran full speed into our trampoline. He has the biggest shiner I have ever seen on a 4 year old. I have some pictures - as soon as I figure out how to upload them, I will.

 

[Brady's Mom]

These are the pics of Nathan - our youngest - from last night and this morning when he ran full speed into our trampoline. I hope I did this right and they show up!

This is Nathan last night

These two pics are Nathan this morning - you can see how some more swelling has occurred!

We spent 2 minutes at Insta-care and they sent me to the Hospital. Thank goodness, because the wait at Insta-care was over an hour. We were at the Hospital for less than 1/2 an hour. And it is only about 6 blocks from my house. The Dr. looked at Nathan and checked him out for any concussion symptoms and broken parts and pronounced him fine! Which is good - since we don't want anything broken with a trip coming up in 3 days!

 

[Brady's Mom]

I am telling you, I want some sleep. For some reason this trip is causing more sleep deficiency in me than any other.

Back to the trip details. This trip was originally formulated early in Feb. when friends of ours were going to DLR and were willing to pick up the Costco AP's for us. Since we knew that we would use them at least once more before the year was up they were worth it, plus there is a $50 gift card attached to the passes which makes them $219 instead of $269. A wise use of money in my opinion.

We originally planned to be in the parks 4.5 days. Part of the day Sunday and then all day Mon - Thur. Sounds like a good plan. YAY! We have passes, we have hotel reservations at HoJo with the Ent. rate - we are SET.

I continue to read the boards and discover someone posting about great fares on JetBlue, I can't remember what airports, but I decide to check it out. I am checking for our Sun to Fri. dates and discover that the prices are just EHH and I can't/don't want to justify the extra cost. It is only about 10 hours in the car, not the most fun way to travel, but very doable. So, I start playing around with different days and discover if we leave on Mon. (Memorial Day) we can get one way airfare for $39. Now that's more like it. I keep playing around with dates and also discover that if we leave Thurs. evening we can also get the $39. I immediately call DH at work and discuss it with him. He says go for it and I waffle a bit on the cost. But, for our family of 5 it will only cost us $496 to fly to Long Beach. We do cut out about 3/4 of a day since we will be there Monday morning and leave late Thurs. afternoon. Is that worth it to me??? HHMMMM . . . I have to think about it for a while and finally decide to do it! I still can't believe that I got airfare for under $100 per person. To me that seems unreal.

Now comes the car rental. I am notoriously cheap about car rental prices. I try Priceline for days trying to get the car price that I want. I check Hotwire, I check other places and the car prices are beyond expensive. They are around $90 a day for a mini-van and about the same price for an SUV. We are bringing our double jogging stroller that folds up nicely, but is still big, and need a big enough space to put it and our luggage. So, I start researching the size of other cars. I check out what the full-size cars are and how big their trunk space is, I try my stroller in my DSis Civic to see if it fits (it does, just snug) and decide that if we can get a full-size car we can do it. The airport is not that far from HoJo, so if we need to we can be squishy with luggage on the floor. I tried Super Shuttle per Bumbershoot's recommendations and no matter what I try I can't get past the $35 for the first person and the 9 or 10 for each additional person. Besides, DH wants to go to the Disney Outlet and the WalMart that is on Euclid? I think. They have great deals on shirts and stuff at both places. I never can get a good price on Priceline or my bid even close to accepted. Maybe my strategy is off, I don't know. So we opt for a rental from Rent4Less. They have a full-size (Impala or similar) car for $40/day. So I snag that. 2 days ago, DH is checking their website and the same car is now going for $35 ish a day. WOOT! So, we cancel the first reservation and make the second at a lower price. Still checking Hotwire and Priceline - but prices have remained steady - except for the three days when Hotwire was at $31.95 a day and I didn't snag it.

 

[Brady's Mom]

The size of the car is what's keeping me up at night. I can just see us getting to the car rental place and the stroller not fitting into the trunk! Then we get slammed with a higher price car - that we don't want and have no choice but to pay the extra. Seems like a little thing, but it is totally stressing me out!!!

Now maybe since I have shared it with this board I can get some sleep.

 

[Brady's Mom]

We have been keeping this trip a secret from our 3 boys since the end of Feb. Our boys know we are going in Sept. but are bummed since their cousins just left yesterday to go to DLR and we can't. We told them since we have AP's we are blacked out this weekend (which we are), they just don't know we are okay on Monday.

I sometimes think I am going to explode with the news. Nathan almost gave it away at dinner one night. We were all sitting around talking about how close the end of school is getting and he throws his arms up in the air and says "when school is out we are going to DISNEYLAND". Thankfully no one really paid him any attention since we were talking about Jeff's music teacher and some trouble that she was having with the school board. We feel like we dodged a bullet on that one.

Since then I have been more careful about what I say in front of Nathan, since he is at home with me all the time and I have to make some arrangements with him around. Plus, he has heard me help my sister make her plans. Her trip was a secret, too.

My DSis and her family arrived in Anaheim about 8 pm last night and didn't tell their kids where they were going during their entire drive (10+ hours). They didn't tell them until they were passing Disneyland. I don't have the full story, yet, since we were just texting each other and that makes it hard to get the details. They are staying at the Anaheim Plaza and will be there until Monday morning - we will not see each other in the parks.

Okay, I think I may be done for the moment. Maybe I have enough off my chest to continue with my regular life.

 

[Brady's Mom]

DH and I have had to scheme and plan in order to be able to pack for our pack of boys. We have planned on laundry on Friday and packing on Sat. The only problem is, the moment we get out the suitcases, our boys will know something is up. Enter my mom and my DSis (not the one at DLR, currently) who lives about an hour north of me. My mom is picking up my boys on Sat. at about 11 am and they are going up to my sister's house to play with her kids (she has 6 - ages 15-7) and go to Antelope Island in No. Utah where they will get very dirty and climb on rocks and check out the buffalo and act like little wild people. Which is fine since they will all be outside and I don't think the buffalo mind!

Meanwhile, DH and I will pack and pack. We will have to squirrel away the clothes we want to take when I do laundry and then figure out how to keep our kid's from noticing all of their Mickey Mouse shirts are not in their drawers.

We will probably have to do an emergency laundry load late Sunday night in order to make sure all shorts and stuff are clean - did I mention I have boys? - so that we can pack any last minute things later on or early Sun. morning.

We will definitely be up before the sun on Monday. Our plane leaves at 7:40 am and the airport is about 45 minutes or so away from us. Which puts us leaving our house between 5 and 5:15. This makes for a very early morning. DH and I will probably be up between 3:30 and 4 and get showered and everything so we can be ready to wake up the boys at 4:45. We pretty much figure they will know something is up when we wake them up that early. We will probably just ask them when we wake them up if they want to go to Disneyland - that we just felt like going today - and what do they think. I figure there will be a lot of yelling and excitement going on. They would figure it out anyway as soon as they put their clothes on - since the only thing available to wear will be Mickey Mouse shirts.

The one thing we will still be able to surprise them with is flying to DLR instead of driving. Well ...... until we get in the car and Jeffrey realizes we have *forgotten* the portable DVD players and the DVD's. And then, because he is like this, he will insist that we wait until he can get them all put together and out to the car! There is no way he would be up for a long drive without that sort of entertainment. It's too bad that the airport is North of us and DLR is South of us - or we could probably string them along about our trip until we got to the airport. But Jeff would know the difference right away and quiz us about why we were going North instead of South.

Do you think the answer *we wanted to go to Disneyland a different way this time* would work??? It might - until we got to the airport. And then the whooping and hollering would start all over again. My kids love, love, love to fly! Since it only takes 1.5 hours it makes it really easy.

I have never flown JetBlue before, so it should be an adventure.

My boys now have 1/2 day of school left. Tomorrow is their last day and they can hardly wait. DH is taking tomorrow off, too (besides all next week) so we can get the rest of our square foot garden finished up and a couple more plants put in before we leave. Our youngest 2 boys love to help us plant and water, so it should be good. My mom works about 1/2 mile from my house and lives about 20 minutes south of us so she will come and water our garden for us while we are gone and collect our mail. We don't have any pets to worry about and have electric timers for our lights. I just have to remember how to work them.

I am VERY glad my boys are almost finished with school. I am tired of driving them there. Not that I won't continue there next year, I am just ready for a break from the driving. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get there, which doesn't seem too bad, until you consider that there is an elementary school 3 houses south of me. Not all of my friends understand our willingness to drive our kids so far away to school when there is a perfectly good school right next to us. But, I really, really don't like the Principal and I hate the math program that our school district uses. It took almost a full year of homeschool math to bring Jeffrey up to grade level when we were ready to switch him to Charter school.

Wow - I had know idea I was holding this much stuff in. Guess I needed the opportunity to write it all out.

Do you think I'll be able to sleep now? Even though I am three days away from going?

 

[Brady's Mom]

Well, it took all day, but the house is clean and the suitcases are 90% packed. We did the laundry and just folded up the clothes and stuck them in the suitcases. We have a few more things to pack, like some toiletries and the kids blankets, but otherwise we are DONE!

My boys went with grandma this morning about 11:30 to my DSis's house about an hour North of me. They had lunch at McDonald's on the way and played at Antelope Island for a good part of the afternoon. Nathan is afraid of all living animals (maybe even dead ones, too???) and he was with my BIL and climbing around on some rocks this afternoon. Well, BIL turns around to check on one of his kids and Nathan starts screaming bloody murder. He can really scream when he is scared. Turns out he's seen a lizard! I asked Jeff how big the lizard was and he told me about 2 inches long. When I asked Nathan about it he told me it was 6-8 inches long. I think his freak out perception is pretty bad. They also saw a buffalo - but stayed in the van. I guess he was pretty big.

DH and I packed and ran a few errands and packed and folded laundry and all of that today. But it was really weird to not have our kids around for so long. They didn't get home until about 8:15, so they were gone a long time. Saturdays are usually the day when we all hang out together and touch base after a hectic week. It was strange not having them in and out all day. I am trying not to feel guilty that the front lawn was mowed and looks really nice and the back lawn was ignored. Guess it will have to wait til next Friday to get mowed.

Okay...off to try to get some sleep - since I haven't been sleeping well AT ALL - for what feels like the last 2 weeks. Now if I can only get through tomorrow without spilling the beans to my kids. I have almost done it once or twice and so has DH.

Tomorrow should be fun - I get to print boarding passes and car rental conf. #'s and make sure that my folder is in order, without letting my kids see what I am printing or doing. Wish me luck!

Shannon

 

[WA Kay]

Hi Shannon

I am a couple days late but I am in. I am loving your pre-trip and can't wait for your trip report. Poor Nathan, that must have knocked him right on his back side. With any luck it will fade a little before the trip so all your pictures don't show his eye swelled shut. I tell you boys can be a real test sometimes. I love my son to death but the trips to the doctor never end.

He is 25 now and called me a few weeks ago for a ride from Seattle to the house. He wanted to come and stay with us for a few days so I could take care of him. He was out with some friends and ended up spraining his ankle. The knot on the side was the size of a grapefruit. Since this was his second such injury, the first time in high school, we knew how to take care of it. That's when I knew it would never end. Oh well, you gotta love them.

I am wishing you "some sleep". You must take care of you. Good luck keeping your secret from the boys.

Kay

 

[Brady's Mom]

YAY!! A reader! Hi Kay.

I was looking closely at Nathan's eye last night and it is now very green and purple - it totally looks like some funky 80's eyeshadow. Very chic. Although the swelling has gone down a lot. He has a little scratch under his eye. He saw my DSis yesterday and I guess I hadn't talked to her this week because she was very shocked when she saw his poor little face.

This sort of explains how I am feeling right now! I have been awake since 4 am. Not for any good reason - just because I woke up then and couldn't go back to sleep. That is a full 5.5 hours of sleep for me.

 

[Brady's Mom]

This is my favorite picture from our 1st family trip to DLR in Oct. 2006. It is DH holding Nathan who has just turned 2, Brady at 4, Alex is holding him and is 18 and Jeff is 10. Love, love, love this picture.

 

[jordansmomma]

Hi! It sounds like you guys are going to have a great trip!
I hope his eye looks a little better before Monday.

Have a great time.

 

[kokotg]

All boys here, too, so I can't wait to read about your trip. I love reading other boy-heavy trip reports! We'll be there the week after you in September, too. Have a great trip!

 

[Brady's Mom]

Hi! It sounds like you guys are going to have a great trip!
I hope his eye looks a little better before Monday.

Have a great time.

Thanks! His eye already looks better. I am almost tempted to match it with some eyeshadow. But it might be a little too sparkly - and he hates any *girly* stuff. He won't even let me paint his toenails. Besides, DH might give me a hard time about the makeup!

 

[Brady's Mom]

All boys here, too, so I can't wait to read about your trip. I love reading other boy-heavy trip reports! We'll be there the week after you in September, too. Have a great trip!

Thanks for reading!

We totally love having boys. The only time I get even a little girl jealousy is when I see cute little Asian or 1/2 Asian girlies with their dark eyes and black hair. Then I might feel a little twinge about not having any girls. But, that soon passes when I am around my nieces and experience any of the high drama that seems to surround them at all ages. They range from 3 to 19.

That's when I remember that four of a kind beats two pair any day!

 

[WA Kay]

Looks like you leave tomorrow. Please try and get some real sleep tonight and no 5 1/2 hours is not enough. Mothers are just not very good at taking care of themselves.

Have a great trip and don't forget those of us waiting here for your trip report. Take a few minutes to get home and settled in and then share your trip with us please.

Safe travel.

Kay

 

[DisDancerina]

Hope you're having fun!

 

[Brady's Mom]

We got back late Thursday Night - about 11:45 - which is really QUITE late for a 4.5 yr old and 7 yr. old. They still haven't really recovered, since neither one of them can seem to sleep later than 7 am.

It was sooooo fun to go into Jeff's room at 4:25 am on Monday and wake him up with "we decided what fun thing we wanted to do today (Memorial Day) - we're going to DISNEYLAND!! Oh yeah, and we're flying! He was up like a shot and just about knocked us out of the way trying to get dresses. He loves DL just like his parents.

We went into Nathan and Brady's room next and woke up Brady with the same type of question - do you want to go to Disneyland today??? - His response was funny - Do you really mean it? You're not kidding me, right? - He seemed a little hesitant to believe that we were actually going and right away. He was also most pleased to find out that we were flying since we have driven about half of our trips.

Nathan was next - but it was a little anticlimactic for him - since he has heard all the planning and whatnot and almost gave away our trip a couple of times. He was still sleepy and not very motivated to get up until his brother's started talking to him about getting ready to go. He was also excited to fly and not have to drive.

It was a good flight, we took JetBlue, it was our first experience with them and they seemed okay and helpful when we needed it. We did have a couple of nice TSA agents at the airport and I was grateful since I had been going on about 4 hours of sleep and not good sleep at that. I kept waking up checking on things - lights/timers, kids, the time, stupid stuff that could have waited until morning. We arrived in Long Beach early to clouds and coolness and proceeded to get our rental car. We were at DLR by 10:30 - 11:00 am after arriving at LGB at 8:30 am. Traffic was really light and it was a very easy drive, we just had to stop for breakfast and at the hotel to check our bags.

Gotta go, I'll update more later!

 

[WA Kay]

Welcome home. Sounds like you had fun. Now get a little rest and come back and share with us please.