What a week and a half! It started not-so-well with the UCLA loss in the bowl game. However, after that, it really was great! On Christmas eve eve (12/23), we stayed at my mom’s house after a Christmas luncheon with my Dad’s ex-employee down in Cupertino. Mom was bored, we were bored, so we decided to drive up there afterwards to hang out. The next day, we had our usual Christmas eve dinner at my grandma’s house. We went out to look at the lights of this one house (not as good as Eucalyptus Ave). We had to open up the presents a little earlier than usual since Brandon was a little cranky. Ok, it was 1130pm, so we can’t really blame him. Then we got up on Christmas day to go back home to pack up for our LA trip. We quickly opened some presents that we had left at home. One was from Auntie Meg and Uncle Jeff – it was a wagon, but it came unassembled. Dave had to quickly put it together all the while Brandon was in his face trying to “help”. He even offered Dave some of his own toys – like his screwdriver and wrench.
Since we were leaving so early in the morning on the 26th and out of SFO, we stayed at my mom’s again (yes, we were determined not to spend any time at our own place). My mom took us to the airport at 430am. Brandon managed to stay sleeping all the way through our ride up to SFO, through security, and as soon as we were ready to pre-board, he woke up (he was staring up at the lights since his seat was fully reclined). The first thing he said was, “Airport!” and struggled to get up so he could see. We didn’t even change him so he was still in his jammies. We rode Virgin American for the first time, which was really neat when it’s dark outside. We changed Brandon on the plane, he had to work out some “toe-jammies” from the footed sleeper. Then we put socks and shoes on him and he was ready to go. Uncle Mike picked us up, and luckily we fit all our stuff in his car! It all just barely fit. While we were going to eat breakfast, Brandon turned to me and said, “Go home?” Oh man, we’re not even here in LA for an hour, and he already wants to go home! (We think he wanted to go back home and play with all the toys we had to leave behind.) I told him we were going to go to Uncle Mike’s house, and he felt a little better and managed to go back to sleep. He slept all the way through breakfast! He woke up while we were walking around the Grove. He ate his pancakes at Uncle Mike’s while the rest of us played Rock Band. Dave’s parents picked us up later and the three of us went back home. We were really getting ready for our two days at Disneyland. Last time we were there in July, Brandon didn’t know who Mickey was. He only knew who he was AFTER we got home from the trip. So this time, we told him, we were going to see him. He was crying at Dave’s parents’ house and we told him Mickey didn’t like crying and that he couldn’t cry if he wanted to see Mickey. He stopped dead in his tracks, wiped off his face, and said, “All done. All done.” His face was still red and swollen, tears streaming down, but no more crying!
So we drove to Anaheim on Thursday morning. After what seemed like an eternity waiting at will call to get our tickets, we were finally in. We went straight for Mickey’s house in Toontown because we could not disappoint and not see Mickey. After 45 minutes, we got to see Steamboat Willy! Brandon was awestruck. He managed to shake his hand and looked at the camera for a picture. The official photographer took a photo and then we asked him to take one with our camera. When we gave him our camera, he said, “Ok, Peter Parker!” because we had Dave’s SLR. He gave it to his assistant who took a couple of quick shots, looked at the screen and said, “Great photo.” As we left Mickey’s, Dave looked at the camera and was upset – the guy cut off the top part of Dave’s head! Man, what “great” photo was he looking at.
So began our quest for the Photopass. For a flat fee, you can purchase a CD of all the pictures taken by the photographers stationed around both parks. So we decided to get the CD so we could save the images that were taken with Mickey. But we wanted to make it worthwhile, so we decided to take pictures wherever we were. We got some nice ones, we’ll have to post them soon.
Afterwards, we met up with The Shih’s for lunch. Then we met up with the Tsau’s – Gracie, Kang, Jack (3) and Samantha (12) and Allison (11 or 12), Andrew (10 or 11) and Lih. Brandon liked Samantha, calling her “Samanta” – she played with him the most, and like to take his nose off, which made him giggle and laugh. It was fun having all the cousins around. We missed taking the picture though, the younger kids were in and out of naps. We said bye to the Tsau’s before dinner as they were going back to their hotel, and had dinner with the Shih’s and then they left. We thought we’d go back and check into the hotel, but we ended up staying until after 1100pm! We got a lot of good rides in then, which would have probably been really crowded during the daytime. Brandon rode the rockets with Dave and we saw fireworks. Brandon was up but faded quickly in the car.
Then our goal was to get up early the next morning and hit all the crowded rides. At 815am, Dave threw back the curtains in the hotel, waking both Brandon and me up. Oh well, I guess we didn’t get off to that early of a start. It’s all Brandon’s fault – he usually wakes up at the crack of dawn. Thank goodness for hotel blackout curtains. So we went for day 2 starting out at Disneyland and then meeting up with Kang’s family in CA adventure. We gave Jack his Christmas present – it was a mini Thomas the train set. Brandon wanted to see it, even though we said it was Jack’s that we had given to him. Jack shared after Brandon said he wanted to “hold it?” He looked at it through the hard plastic packaging then asked for “Scissors?” When we told him we didn’t have scissors, he proceeded to unload – “Hammer? Saw? Wrench? Screwdriver?” With each NO answer that we gave him, he’d try another tool. It was so funny; he really tried almost ever tool he has seen in either his or Dave’s toolbox. At each meal, we had milk for Brandon. I asked him if he wanted a straw for milk, he said, “Only water,” and threw out the straw. Later, he did use it, but who knew he could be so “particular”. We had small Clementine oranges from Dave’s mom as snacks. We would give him segments of it in the stroller and he would work so hard to get the white peel stuff off of each segment before eating it. Meg asked if he could unpeel them, as they keep Abbie entertained by having her unpeel it. We said he couldn’t do it – which we later learned that if given a head start, he could unpeel the oranges and eat it all by himself.
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The rest of our LA trip was relaxed. We stood in line for an hour to see the Rose Parade float decorations. My mom picked us up in her car because our car wouldn’t start. There was an interior light left on, and it drained the battery. Luckily we have jumper cables in the car so we were able to restart it. We drove back home, Brandon was out cold. My mom agreed to come down with us and watch Brandon while we went to Ted and Michelle’s for new year’s dinner. We unloaded the car, put Brandon in his own bed, and started taking down the Christmas tree and Christmas stuff. I wanted to do it before Brandon woke up. While we were doing that, about a half an hour in, Dave suddenly startled. Then he said, “Hey, what are you doing, you scared me.” He was using the voice he only uses to talk to Brandon, so I knew it was him. But he had found the wagon that Dave put together in the hallway, so he got to that before he had a chance to cry and look around for us. He was already playing with it and looking at it before we discovered he was out there. He walked out and there was no Christmas tree. I told him that Christmas is all gone until next year. “Christmas all gone,” he repeated. He had started to copy Jesselyn and said, “I like the Christmas tree” and “I like this song.” He even said it almost in the same intonation, and they were exact quotes. We ended our celebration with my Dad’s birthday dinner, celebrated early. Dave, Brandon and I had taken him out separately for lunch, but there were 17 people last night at dinner. Today, I’m exhausted, but at least there is a short week this week!