Disneyland

Rebecca went to Disneyland for the first time last week (with me and Mike and my parents (and a million other people)).  We wanted to wait until after she turned 3 so she'd hopefully enjoy it a little more.  She was very excited...until we got there.  She was pretty much scared of everything.  By 10 am, she wanted to go home.  Wah wah (say that in 70s game show "loser" sound effect).

Luckily, she has a friend at school whose dad works at Disneyland so we did not pay to get in. We are very grateful for that gift!  I would have been even MORE disappointed if we had spent hundreds of dollars to get in and she had this reaction.  I was envisioning that magical joy that you see kids experience at Disney.

There were a couple of those moments, thankfully.  The highlight - when she got to meet Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas.  Oddly, she has come to love that movie in the past few months.  She was most looking forward to seeing them.  We stood in line for quite a while to see them but they spent a good 3 or 4 minutes with her.  It wasn't just a photo and move on.  It was SO sweet.  Here are the pics:

And here's a sweet video of Jack and Sally teaching Rebecca how to scare:

Here are a few other pics from Disneyland:

Probably the 2nd most magical moment.

The only ride she really liked...Autopia...where she got to drive the car!  She thought she was HOT STUFF!!  We even rode this one twice!

Grandma and Grandpa

 

 

All of us with Mickey.

Going with the theme of firsts...Rebecca also saw her first movie in the theater last weekend.  We saw The Peanuts Movie.  As many of you know, her main squeeze stuffed animal that she's had since she was very little is a Woodstock.  The story behind that...my mom had given her a stuffed monkey with a tuft of yarn hair on its head.   She slept with that for a while, but loved to play with the hair as she fell asleep.  Poor little monkey went bald.  So I was looking for other animals with yarn hair and suddenly, the Kohl's Cares stuff came out and there was a Woodstock with an entire mane of yarn hair!  We have about 5 of them (just in case).  She has given several of them the need to join the Hair Club for Birds...but a few of them are still hanging on.

Anyway, that's why we went to see the Peanuts Movie.  She did great.  The only drawback was she wasn't heavy enough for the theater seat and it folded up even when she was in it!  We improvised and used my purse and Mike's jacket as a booster!

The other drawback...somewhere along the way, she knew that getting popcorn was a thing at the movies.  She also heard that hot dogs were common.  So, she wanted both.  We thought - what the heck - it's her first movie, let's just do it.  Well, $60 later...enough said.

Here are some pics:

One other thing she's been doing a lot lately is "cooking".  A couple of weeks ago, on a Saturday or Sunday, she wanted to cook.  I happened to be cleaning out the fridge at the time, so I gave her a bowl of water, salt, freezer burned veggies, corn startch and some expired condiments and she went to town.

Here are some pics and a video from this morning:

 

And last but not least, I wanted to let you all know that I was able to get an internal position at my current company (well, the new, conquering company anyway).  It's not ideal (it will involve 30% travel) and it's the same kind of work I used to do that I got away from for a reason.  But...I get to keep the same salary and we can continue to be housed and eat and all of that stuff.  So, it's good for now.  Thanks to all of you who sent me happy thoughts!