So Where Are We Now

Well, to finish a thought from last post, this past weekend was most enjoyable. Heath Brown and I traveled to Mesa and met up with Spencer Bigler, Preston Bigler, Cody Claridge, Scott Carnes, Danny Barney, Lamar Echols and David and Jillian at the Buffalo Wild Wings for a full day of basketball, laughs and good food. (I know when Shannon reads this, she will laugh out loud at me calling Buffalo Wild Wings good food. Not her favorite.) The day started with just me, Heath and Cody catching the end of the Arizona State game. They won and in honor of the win, they held a Super Shot contest on the little Super Shot basket. I am proud to say, I won. I am also humiliated to say...I am proud I won. But you have to take pride in whatever small things present themselves. However, I got over the humiliation quickly as the prize was 18 free wings. We got started on our road to heartburn early. The rest of the evening was exactly what you would expect it to be, including one moment where Spencer made an inappropriate joke and all of us were crying from laughing.


This is a before shot of our yard. I hope to be able to post an after shot within a month or two.

After arriving home at 12:30 that night, I got up the next morning and with the help of Clinton and Rhett Dodge, I leveled out my front yard in preparation for a new sprinkler system and sod. A couple of questions from this: When did we start having 90 degree days in March? How much dust can someone inhale before they should start thinking about a trip to the emergency room and how did everyone let me get so out of shape that digging in the dirt for 5 hours came very close to killing me? Wait, don't answer that last one as I am sure the explanation will include something about Dr. Pepper and I am not ready to have that conversation.

It was a highly productive and fun weekend. Unfortunately, as we learned with our Disneyland trip, everything really positive in our lives right now is generally tempered by a negative sobering reality. Just before we left for Disneyland, my mom was complaining of a lack of strength in her right arm and leg. When we returned just one week later, she could no longer use either one. When we went to visit my parents Sunday night after our weekend, we were stunned to find that my mom could no longer talk to us. Sometimes when you learn something bad is coming, you think you are ready only to find you completely aren't. I believe that would best describe my emotions in this instance.



Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to mention. Through all of this, but especially since February, my wife has gone beyond her normal amazing spouse status, all the way up to saint. She has shut down her schedule and gone to Duncan several times to help my mom write letters to each of my kids. Because of work, I was not able to and now doing that would be completely impossible. My mom said she wanted to tape herself reading some books to my kids. Shannon dropped everything and went the next day. Ironically, it was just six days later that my mom couldn't even tell me how she was doing. I am a very lucky man. I can't say enough about how much I love and appreciate Shannon. As we continue to navigate this path we are currently on, I know I can count on her for anything and everything. And you know? There is no way to adequately thank her. I wish there was. But at the moment, I will at least say Thank You Sweetheart! You are the best!

The pictures on this post are just some random pictures from our last few weeks.

It Should Be A National Holiday

When I was on my mission in England, I once saw a billboard of a doofy looking guy with nappy long blonde hair in what appeared to be his wedding photo. The caption next to the photo said, "Best Day of My Life? No Way! United Lost To Nottingham 2-0." I don't know why that billboard sticks in my mind so well after all these years, but I have always thought it was clever. It has also come to be a little representative in my mind of my early dating experiences with Shannon. That poor, wonderful woman began dating me in the month of March. In fact, we just had the 14th anniversary of our 1st date on March 10th. What she could never have known but quickly learned, is that part of the package that is Ryan Rapier is an acceptance that March is a special month. A month where normally important things get set aside for the greater good that is the NCAA Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. The fact that we stayed together and eventually married despite the fact that she had to compete with the tournament during our first month of dating is really quite remarkable. It is funny, because I don't watch sports a lot. In fact, as far as being a sports widow, Shannon has done pretty well. But that all changes with the first tip on the third weekend in March.

She may have thought it was just a ridiculous phase that would pass once we were married. However, that first March of our married life (two months into wedded bliss) she learned otherwise. She had to put up with my friend Preston being at our house almost two full weekends in a row with both of us basically ignoring anything she said. This only got worse the next year when UofA made their national championship run. At least she learned to invite her friend Becky over as well so someone would actually listen to her and carry on a conversation that didn't go something like, "What would you like for dinner?"

(Silence)

"Honey, what would you like for dinner?"

"NOOOOO!!!"

"You don't want dinner?"

"Huh?"

"I was asking what you wanted for dinner and you basically said you didn't want any."

"What are you talking about?"

"DINNER! Do you want any?!?"

"Hadn't thought about it. Whatever you want to...YESSSSSS!!! ...What were we talking about again?"

She had to go to bed several times alone while I stayed up and finished out the day's games. She missed some really great games by the way, but when I tried to describe them to her, she didn't seem that interested. However, she was a good sport and at least tried to sound interested at first.

Finally after a few years, we just accepted our short separations and I would go off and watch games with some friends at a sports bar. She is a saint for letting me do this.

So, tomorrow, I will leave her alone again and head down to Mesa to hang out with the same friends and watch basketball at a sports bar for about 8 hours straight while drinking way to much soda and eating chicken wings that will give me heartburn like I have never experienced before. I know this because each year I get older and the heartburn gets worse. We will ruin some waitresses night because we will order no alcohol and sodas have free refills thereby killing her chance at a good tip from one table for the entire day. We start out the day geniuses for our astute basketball knowlegde in picking the perfect bracket. 8 hours later, I will throw that same bracket in the trash because it is a testament to my stupidity about college basketball. In other words, I will experience a sort of heaven on earth that comes around just once a year. I can't imagine why everyone doesn't want to do this. So, I officially wish everyone, everywhere, A truly Merry March Madness Day. May all of your bracket predictions come true. Unless you are in my basketball pool in which case, may your weekend end in a horrible twisted wreck of despair.

Disneyland Journal, Part 5. I Stayed Up Til Midnight Which Is 1 In Arizona Time

As we have covered most everything that a family does on a trip to Disneyland, this final chapter will not be as detailed as the last four. In fact, we will not do the time of day or any of that, we will just include pictures and a few interesting (at least to us) stories from the trip's final two days.



Friday for lunch, we decided to go and eat while watching one of our favorite shows at Disneyland, Billy Hill and the Hillbillies. If you have never seen this show, it is hilarious and even though the show is pretty much the same every time, the main guy is good enough that you keep coming back time after time. Anyway, it was getting pretty crowded and so this nice family asked if they could share a table with us. When the husband asked where we were from, Shannon told them Thatcher, AZ. She overheard just a short time later the husband tell the wife that we were from Thatcher, you know that place where Spencer Kimball was from. We are thinking they were Mormons



We finally made our way into Innoventions in Disneyland which is a very large building that spins around. When we got inside, we realized the entire top floor is video games. I'm surprised Braden isn't still there.



That night, we got with Danae and Lamar and family and hit all the big rides together. We got Logan to agree to try Splash Mountain again as long as he could wear Shannon's sweatshirt to keep him from getting wet. He loved it and went twice.



We stayed at the park until about 11:30 p.m. As Braden was still letting us know what time it was locally as well as AZ time (Yes, he kept it up the entire week) he was very excited to let us know that he was going to stay up until Midnight and that would be 1:00 a.m. Arizona time. Not sure what was so exciting about that, but it he let us know this fact no less than 20 times leading up to and then after the actual event.



The next day we went to California Adventure for a short time before heading home. Our last ride of the trip? Soarin' Over California. Greatest ride ever. We even got them to let us ride on the top row. To end our trip, we went back to the hotel and kept a promise we made to our kids from the minute we had arrived and had lunch at IHOP before leaving. My kids must love pancakes because that was almost as impressive to them as any Disneyland ride.

After another 13 hours in the car and another night spent in Prescott, we made it home. It was nice to be home and in our own bed. But even before the day ended, the comment was made that we wished were back in that magical place. But then I promised Shannon I would try and wait for a few months at least. And since then...Logan has begged to go back just about every day since. I think he was impressed.

Big Love? Big Deal!

For those who are breathlessly awaiting the conclusion of our Disneyland series (I'm sure there are many), I hope to get that done on Sunday. But in the mean time, I had some thoughts that are just bouncing around my brain that are causing me to not concentrate. So if I write them down, then maybe I won't dwell on them as much and can move on with my day. Here goes:

For those who haven't heard, the HBO series Big Love, about a polygamous family in Utah (Shocker, how come they never have the polygamous family in Rhode Island? Just a thought), is airing an episode that will fully show the temple endowment ceremony. I am not crazy about that. In fact, I find it highly offensive. But several well meaning LDS members have started on-line petitions to boycott HBO, AOL and Time Warner. The Church has taken the stand that they are just basically going to ignore it because to do anything else would only give it more attention and that is the last thing wanted. I can't help but wonder what those who want to start a boycott hope to accomplish. First, asking Mormons to boycott HBO is probably akin to asking the National Organization of The Lactose Intolerant to boycott the dairy industry. I mean how many LDS families actually subscribe to HBO in the first place? Second, isn't there already a national boycott underway against AOL due to the fact that they SUCK and have sucked for the past 15 years!? Finally, an LDS boycott of Time Warner would probably be similar to the Southern Baptists boycotting Disney in the early 90's over the priest's knee being confused with another body part in "The Little Mermaid". After a few years, they called off the boycott and Disney's response was; "Oh, were you gone?"

Now please understand that I get the "it's the principal of the issue" argument. I really do. I guess I am just suffering fatigue from the amount of "it's the principal of the issue" issues that are out there. I seem to get an e-mail every other day or so telling me about another thing I should avoid or a petition to sign. Some I act on and others I take more of this kind of approach. When I look at it logically, I figure no more than 5 million people will see "Big Love". (Personally I believe that is probably stretching it.) That is less than 2% of the American public. Of those two percent, about half probably fall into the category of HBO viewer who believes if a scene doesn't have something naked or bloody in it, then it must be time to get more Cheetos. So with those kind of numbers, I believe the relevance of this whole thing only gets raised when LDS folks rise to the bait and bring it more attention. I believe that is what the producers were and are hoping for by showing it in the first place. By next week, I'm sure 98% of Americans will never even know what happened and another 1.5% will have forgotten. So to HBO and the producers of Big Love I say, is that the best you got? Then Big Whoop!

Disneyland Journal, Part 4. It Was Fun, It Was Fast

It is intended that this post will be a tad shorter as well. I know I said the last one would be (and it was slightly) I am going to skip things that may have been covered in previous posts and/or not that interesting. So, we move to day 4.

8:15 a.m. - When you buy a multi-day pass to Disneyland, they let you get in one day an hour earlier than everybody else who doesn't have a multi-day pass. This causes you to run like mad men to try and get as much in before the lines again start forming. Today was our day and we got there 15 minutes late, so our Magic Morning, as it is called by Disney, was only 45 minutes. But we made the most of it. We had originally intended to meet Danae and Lamar and family for the early morning, but we got a call from Lamar the night before at 10:20 letting us know they were still in a Denny's and Elizabeth was having a small meltdown. They would not be making the early morning with us. Having seen a few meltdowns already ourselves, (including a few by the children) we understood.

8:30 a.m. - Shannon wanted to go on Space Mountain. Braden and Abby wanted no part of it, but Logan said he wanted to. When they got off, Logan had a big ol' smile on his face. I asked if he liked it and he said, "It was fun, it was really fast." So it was decided that I would go on Space Mountain and Logan would go again with me. Braden and Abby? Still wanted no part of it.



9:30 a.m. - We ride the Autopia cars and Logan, Braden and Abby all get to drive their own cars (Shannon rode with Braden and I rode with Logan.) All in all, Logan drove amazingly well for someone who could not see over the steering wheel.



10:15 a.m. - We head over to California Adventure and meet up with Danae and Lamar's family. We were moving toward the Tower of Terror, when Logan saw his hero, Handy Manny. He hopped out of the stroller and went up and got to meet him.

10:30 a.m. - We ride Tower of Terror. Bryson didn't want to. Logan started to not want to as well as we got into the dark places of the ride. However, it was Abby who provided the non-stop screaming once the dropping started. It was so ear piercing that my head still has a ringing in it some what. When it was over, Logan had met his match. He did not want to do that one again at all. Neither did Abby. Braden? He never went on it in the first place but rather waited with Danae and Lizzie.



10:45 p.m. - While Danae and Lamar ride Tower of Terror on a parent pass, we watch all five kids. We decide to take them on Monsters Inc. While we are in line, someone looks at us with amazement and asks if they are all ours. I assure them they are not, but I realize that there are five children total. If we do as Shannon suggests and have another child, then in the future, we would have to answer yes to that question. I begin to hyperventilate.



11:30 a.m. - Today, lunch will consist of pizza (I ended up not being able to get out of it in the end). During this break in the action, Logan announces another poop break is in order. What is it with this kid and needing to go poop when the food arrives? However, I could now provide an in-depth critique of just about every bathroom in Disneyland and California Adventure. Don't worry, I won't.



12:30 p.m. - Once again, time has run out for Abby. It is time for her to ride California Screamin'. She desparately doesn't want to. She actually made herself "sick" to get out of it the day before. Said sickness was cured five minutes after walking away from the ride. But today? She will not get out of it so easy. The day before she had said she needed to eat and she was sick and couldn't ride because she needed dinner. This time, she tried the I am sick because I just ate. Man, this girl will be a lawyer some day. After half an hour in line, she has informed me that she hates me and what an awful father I am to make her go on this. I said, "I know." She rides it...and hates it. I think I could have written that sentence, She hates it...then she rides it and it would have been just as applicable. Oh well, she did it once and that was all we required.



2:00 p.m. - I wore my Valentine's Day gift which was a black T-shirt that said, Trophy Husband. With my own personal melt down at lunch, my exhaustion settling in from not really sleeping well the night before and my allergies kicking into full gear, I truly was some Trophy Husband. We decide our family needs to head back to the hotel for naps. The kids might need one, but Dad definitely does.

5:00 p.m. - Before heading back to the parks, I go over to Subway across from our hotel and get dinner. I was tenth in line, but each person in line suddenly morphed into 3 or 4 when it became their turn to order. However, the worst was the couple who started ordering and kids just kept appearing out of no where. By my last count there were at least 8 kids. An hour later, I finally get to order our food.





7:00 p.m. - We meet up again with Danae and Lamar and fam and have wonderful evening riding as many rides as possible. Due to the showing of Fantasmic, we do pretty well. However, one downside of the night was when I made it to Pirates at the end of Fantasmic with Abby and Elizabeth and there was absolutely no wait. Somehow, everyone else got caught by the crowd before they could get through. It is very depressing waiting for your party and seeing literally hundreds of people going to get in line for a ride you could have just walked on. But as Fantasmic came to and end, the rest of the group couldn't get to me. It led to about 3 or 4 cell phone calls that went something like:

"Where are you?"

"Right on the bridge above you?"

"Ok, see you in a minute."

8 minutes go by, 250 people get in the Pirates line.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

"They made us go one way, but then they told us we couldn't go this way and sent us back the other way."

"Well get here as quickly as possible."

"WE ARE TRYING!!!

10 minutes later, 300 more people have gotten in line for Pirates.

"WHAT!!!"

"I was just wondering where you were?"

"We are back up on the bridge above you. They won't let us through on either side."

"Ok, try to get here soon."

"Don't call again."

We eventually made it on the ride and the line wasn't too bad in the end.



8:45 p.m. - Tonight is Logan's turn and he has decided he wants a Mickey ears hat and so he and I go in search of a Mickey ears hat while Shannon takes the kids to get ice cream in Downtown Disney. We say goodbye to Danae and Lamar and work out that we will see them the next day. Logan picks a blue Mickey ears hat with silver ears and it lights up when you push a button. We get his name stitched on the back. He is thrilled.

9:00 p.m. - We all meet up and have some wonderful Haagen Daaz ice cream before heading back to the hotel to go to sleep. AHHH, blessed sleep.

I don't think this is any shorter, but oh well, we are almost done if you are finding the time to read all of these. At least we will remember this trip in detail for years to come.

Disneyland Journal, Part 3. Young Lady In The First Row, Is That Your Brother?

As both the previous posts have been fairly lengthy, we will keep this one a little shorter. So, here we go:

8:00 a.m. - Wake Up. The excitement that causes people, especially children, to wake early full of nervous energy on a vacation has worn off, and the walking on concrete for hours on end exhaustion has started to set in. We all roll out of bed with this Disneyfied zombie look that says, "I think I would prefer to sleep for another four hours, but we are going to have fun today, even if it kills us."



10:00 a.m. - Arrive at California Adventure. First thing we do is make a break for the Soarin' Over California ride. I am going to take moment and welch on my deal for a shorter post by saying, I LOVE THIS RIDE. Reasons? 1. The music is some of the most relaxing music ever heard in a theme park. When I hear it anywhere, I automatically get a glazed look in my eye and the knots in my shoulders release just a little bit. 2. What other ride gives you the smell of pines when you fly over the forest, or oranges when you fly over an orange grove? True, if you are on the second or third row, it might allow you to smell the foot odor that can come with walking all day in a theme park, but I am willing to overlook that. 3. I love the sensation of flying. My brother-in-law Cody for his bachelor "party" went skydiving. I would totally do that in a heartbeat. Shannon has pretty strong feelings against that because she feels strongly I should not put myself in a position of dying while we still have four kids at home. But I love that feeling of flying. After this ride, we see it is going to be a busy day at the park and so we fast pass this ride because it is one of our favorites.



10:30 a.m. - While Shannon, Braden and Abby go on the Grizzly River (get soaked on a round raft) Ride, I take Logan into the huge play area with rope bridges. It is funny to me that this trip and the last trip included both my boys just loving the rope or "net" bridges. When we went there the first time, Shannon was terrified to walk on these, but both our boys just eat them up. Abby too for that matter.



11:45 a.m. - Abby is determined to eat at the Corn Dog Castle. They serve the largest corn dogs I have ever seen. She then sits in the stroller while I push it and eats her corn dog. Now that folks is livin' La Vida Loca.



1:45 p.m. - We stop for lunch and I finally get my clam chowder in a bread bowl. Having lost it the way I did the day before, I appreciate it just a little bit more.



2:30 p.m. - Logan has his transcendent moment of the trip. He gets to go with Braden and Shannon to the Playhouse Disney show. Here, he gets to see Mickey, Goofy, Handy Manny and many more in a show where he is invited to sing along and participate regularly. You must understand that Logan is the kid who when he goes to Library day, refuses to sing along or get involved in story time other than to listen. He wants no part of interactivity. Well, I guess Mickey and Handy Manny are enough to get him to shed his inhibitions as he jumped and yelled and sang at full volume through the entire show. He came out and couldn't get the words out fast enough about how good the show was. That is why you go to Disneyland.



3:25 p.m. - We ride Monster's Inc. We had not been on this ride before. It was fun but at the end, Roz is the last thing you see and the car you are in stops right in front of her. At this point, she said to Abby and Logan in the first row of our car, "Young lady in the first row, is that your brother?" Abby looks around clearly embarressed and squeaks out a "yes". "I thought so, you both have two eyes." My kids thought that was the greatest thing ever. They repeated that no less than 50 times over the next two hours. I have to say I am truly impressed how good at Roz's voice all three of them are, especially Abby. She makes me proud with the number of voices and accents she can do well.



4:45 p.m. - After 45 minutes in line, and being talked up by a giant Mr Potato Head, we ride the brand new Toy Story Midway Mania Ride. Awesome!!! I mean you are basically playing a video game in 3-D. How cool is that?!?! Unfortunately, we couldn't turn around and do it again, because as we mentioned, 45 minute wait.

6:00 p.m. - Leave park and go to dinner. In what is quickly becoming a tradition for my wife and I, I order something that is safe and a known quantity. Shannon orders something a bit on the unknown side. She then hates her meal and wishes she had gotten mine. I feel bad for her, but not enough to eat what she got nor give her my dinner.

6:45 p.m. - Tonight it is Braden's turn to go with Dad and he decides he would like to do pin trading. We buy him a lanyard, pins and a lanyard medal. He said it reminded him of getting a medal at gymnastics. Anyway, on the way home, he was so happy he was saying things like, "Everyone who loves their Dad, raise their hand." Then he would raise his hand as high as possible. Now that is a confidence booster. Never mind he was mad at me a mere half hour later, for now it was awesome. He also wanted to ride the parking tram. This probably added an additional 10 minutes to our journey and gave us the opportunity to walk through a darkened parking lot, but when your son is singing your praises the way he was, I would have ridden the parking tram to San Diego and walked back if he wanted me to. One of my best memories with Braden, hands down.

9:00 p.m. - Kids are in bed and as we knew we would before we ever went on this trip, we were in place and ready to watch Lost. That is commitment right there folks. However, I begin to notice that if I lay on the bed in the same position for too long, my bones, muscles and ligaments all begin to protest to the point I can almost hear them screaming. And we have three days left! I am glad I am young at heart. My body is telling me that might be the only young place I have left.

Disneyland Journal, Part 2. Are You Sure You Can't Wait

After a really cool night on Monday, we woke prepared for a full day in Disneyland. How did the day greet us? Completely cloudy and rainy. The following is a timeline of our first day in Disneyland.

9:00 - Twenty minutes before this, it had stopped raining and the sun had shone through the clouds. As we leave the hotel, the clouds are back and it proceeds to rain hard on us for the 1/4 mile walk we have to the gates of Disneyland. Fortunately, Shannon had the foresight to pack us ponchos. Unfortunately, the ponchos only covered the top half of our bodies and our pants got soaked. To add to the joy we were experiencing at this point of our day, Logan was highly frustrated that we made him get in his poncho and ride in the stroller. He is not a baby. He informed us of that many times and felt it a personal insult to have to get in that stroller. For anyone familiar with Logan's grumpy face, that is the look he had the entire ride to Disneyland. Boy are we getting off to a good start.

9:20 - Arrive at Disneyland. Just at the point where we are able to reach cover from the rain...it stops raining and the sun comes out. This is a good thing, but you still find it hard not to ask why couldn't it have come out twenty minutes before.

9:30 - We decide our first ride of the day will be Buzz Lightyear. As we get going, Logan begins to understand that this ride is going to take place in the dark. Not crazy about that idea and also a little intimidated that a full size Zurg is shooting at him. Logan's view of the ride...We don't need to go on that one again right now. Meanwhile Abby and Braden rode in their own car and spun that car continuously while on the ride. Their score was abysmal but they sure enjoyed getting dizzy on the ride.














9:45 - Next we went to Fantasyland and went through the newly opened Sleeping Beauty's castle. We arrived at the entry at the exact same moment as some other folks and being raised by goodly parents, we extended the courtesy of letting them go in first. In retrospect, I should been like most everyone who lives in Southern California and shoved my way in front. To understand, this attractions is a narrow darkened hallway with stairs that goes through the main Sleeping Beauty Castle while providing different windows that have scenes from the movie Sleeping Beauty. When someone is ahead of you, it is very hard to get past them. The people we let go ahead of us decided it was important to get a digital picture of every single window and effect. If a window had two or three effects, they would get a picture of all three. Also, the lady taking the pictures needed to make sure that every picture was perfect so there were repeats at several points. Meanwhile, Logan is again not crazy about the dark and the longer these people in front of us take, the more people are backing up behind us wanting to move forward. Also take into account most of these people had experienced the same rain we had and it was starting to have a nice musty/wet dog smell. I don't think I have been that close to wanting to be rude in a Disney park since Shannon barely stopped me from putting a lit cigarette into the pocket of the man in line in front of us to get food at Disney's Animal Kingdom after he smoked it right there in line and then dropped it on the ground still smoldering. I had picked it up and was right there when Shannon made me stop. Anyway, I was about there with these folks.














10:00 - Small World. Logan begins to loosen up. I think he realized darkness was going to be a part of just about everything we did and it wasn't necessarily all bad.














10:20 - We head to Toon Town. Logan gets to meet Mickey. Just like with Braden before him, this is one of the highlights we will never forget. Complete awe.

10:30 - We go on the Toon Town roller coaster. Logan loves it. Braden did not want to go and begged not to go until we made him get on. Once it was over, he said, "That was quite fun" and begged to go again.

11:30 - We decide to get the kids pizza in Toon Town. Shannon decides to join them and gets some for herself. I choose to hold out for better food later. This would come back to bite me.

12:30 - We ride Thunder Mountain Railroad. Logan laughs the entire ride and begs to go again. If you ask him today, he will tell you this was his favorite ride of the whole trip.

1:15 - We can put Braden off no longer and go to ride the rockets. In case you are not keeping track, we are not doing a very good job of staying in one part of the park very well. That equates to a lot of walking.

1:45 - In keeping with the tradition of walking all over the park, we then go to Pirates and Haunted Mansion. Kids give them the thumbs up.














2:15 - We get our first Churro of the trip. I love Churros. I don't care that we spent $45 on Churros while we were there, they were worth it. Isn't it amazing how out of whack your financial sensibilities can get while at Disneyland? Following this, Braden is done asking. He now demands that we ride the train.

3:00 - While trying to get on Splash Mountain, the guy at the front of the ride tells us that Logan is probably too short so he sends us to the loading area for them to test him again. When we get there, they tell us he is fine and to wait right there. They then put us on the next log. AWESOME...SPLASH MOUNTAIN, NO WAIT! Abby and Braden don't like it and Logan doesn't care for it either. But his reasoning is that he got wet. He demanded we go back to the hotel immediately and change his clothes. How about the long drop? No big deal, but in case we missed it...he is wet and this must be addressed immediately. He is quite irate when we choose to not deal with this pressing matter.

3:45 - Logan was not crazy about going on Haunted Mansion again, but Shannon, Abby and Braden want to. So I am now going to take the opportunity to get some good food while they go on that ride and I will keep Logan with me. I get Clam Chowder in a bread bowl and as I sit down to take my first bite...Logan needs to go pee. I finally find a table away from everyone else very near a restroom. I run into the restroom, hold Logan up to the urinal and pull his pants up the second he is done to get back to my food before they take it away. I think we pulled that off in less than 90 seconds. Awesome. I then sat down to my delicious lunch. 10 bites in, Logan says, "I gotta go poop." "Can it wait?" "Noooo." So back we go into the restroom. There will be no rushing this and when I return, my breadbowl and wonderful soup are gone.

4:30 - We had told Abby she would have to ride Indiana Jones when we went. She was very nervous about this, but the time had come. I took her and we got in a 25 minute line. After waiting for a half an hour, we get to the front of the line and...it breaks down. We ended up waiting it out and it only took an additional 15 minutes, but still. She is now a nervous wreck. As it turns out, this ends up being her second favorite ride of the trip.














5:45 - Nemo followed by the monorail. Both big hits except that Abby is freezing in the monorail because you can't roll the windows up.

6:45 - We leave the park for the day and go to dinner in Downtown Disney. As we pass under the railroad track, the train is there getting loaded for its next run. Braden calls out to the engineer, "I love your train."

7:30 - Time to head back to the hotel. Logan is cold and so we wrap him in his blanket and put him in the stroller. Funny, he isn't near as opposed to it now as he was earlier. No more than fifty yards and he is asleep.

7:45 - Each night, I would take a different child and let them pick something they wanted and just spend some time together. Tonight it was Abby's turn and we set off. We had discussed getting her some pins to do pin trading, but Downtown Disney has a huge Build a Bear workshop and she decided a new outfit for Tara was more important. So we hung out in the Build a Bear store and eventually, Tara got a Camp Rock shirt with a denim skirt and tennis shoes.

8:00 - Abby and I stop at the Haagen Daaz store and eat some of the best ice cream EVER!!! It was freezing and we were really cold but who cares. It was awesome.

8:30 - Shannon's shoes had let water in during our walk to the parks that morning. They never dried out. When she finally took her socks off, white prunes were attached to her ankles. A bed has never felt so good.