To Disneyland and back again...

As I have mentioned, I went to Disneyland with my kids. Most of you that would read this probably already know that about 4 months ago my aunt Cathy was diagnosed with brain cancer (melanoma in her brain). She was given a pretty grave diagnosis, and so she began to plan the things she wanted to do while she was still feeling up to doing them. One of the big ones was to go to Disneyland with all the family, more specifically with the little kids. So, we obviously couldn't/wouldn't miss that. My sister Melanie flew into Spokane to help me drive there. On Tuesday, June 26th we Mel, the kids and I) drove from Spokane to SLC. The kids and I slept at my in-laws house that night, BTW-it took us about 2-3 hours longer than the estimated 10 hours (estimated by mapquest) because of some construction through the mountains in Northern Idaho. The next day I was told we were aiming at leaving between 10 am and noon to drive to Primm, NV where we would be spending the night. I assumed, knowing my family that this really meant noon...actually it meant like 2...So, we drove on that afternoon/evening, stopping for potty breaks for a couple of cute little boys in the other car a few times. The next morning, we wanted to be up and out early so as to avoid the hottest heat in the Mojave desert, and to get to Disneyland that day. It shouldn't have been too long of a drive (like maybe 5-6 hours if I remember), but here's the hitch-my oldest 2 kids spent the early, early morning hours barfing all over our hotel room, and I got very little sleep. So, I knew it would be a long brutal day-especially know it was supposed to be well over 100 degrees the whole day. We did manage to be out of the hotel by about 7 am (or something like that), and get going, but I had to call my mom and sister in the other care shortly after beginning cause one of my kids had thrown up. To make a long story short, my kids kept throwing up and we kept having to stop. At one point, we were stuck in 110 degree heat in construction traffic in California somewhere with Melanie holding two little bucket of throw-up, one from each of my kids. This disgusting situation lasted about an hour before we could get out of traffic and to an exit to clean up. Needless to say, getting to Disneyland was not a fun or easy experience. But we made it!!!

In our little caravan, I had myself, Melanie and my 3 kids, and the other van had my sister, her 3 kids, my mom and my brother. When we got there, we met up with XiaXia, Papou, Cathy, Mary, Brooke, Tiffany, Lina, and Kris who had already been there a day (lucky kids got to fly out...) We went to Disneyland that day and had a great time. We did cut it a bit short as my kids were really still getting over whatever bug thay had. That was Thursday when we arrived. My dad flew in the next day. We were at Disneyland the whole day on Friday. It was a lot of fun and we got to spend a lot of time with the family. Friday night, Wesley's flight was supposed to arrive in LA at 11:3o PM, but had delay after delay, and my parents ended up going o pick him up at about 3 AM. At 7 AM, on Saturday June 30th (Wesley's 28th Birthday), we were back at Disneyland to take advantage of our early admission passes. We had already done this special little ToonTown early admission thing the day before, but this was our overall park early admission. So, we went in with all the kids and just did all of Fantasyland in about an hour, then was had to head over to a character Breakfast at the hotel by California Adventures. THe whole family, as in ALL of the family that was there had a reservation to eat breakfast together with the characters (another thing Cathy really wanted to do), and after which we took a big family picture. Thanks goodness for the newlywed couple standing outside the restraunt waiting for their table (they took all the pics for us). That is the picture you see at the top. We finished out our day at Disneyland and were all set to return home the next day.

I had planned to caravan back to SLC and then on to Spokane (according to mapquest it was only about 30-45 minutes difference tim-wise to go that way instead of just going straight up through Cali/Oregon way back to Spokane), but I had decided at that point, that saving an hour would be a big deal. So, I decided to drive home the omore direct way. Big Mistake! Driving out of Anaheim was ok, but as soon as I got past Six Flags, traffic got HORRIBLE going through this uphill part of this mountain range. It was practically stopped most of the time. So, we were stuck in this traffic with no exits anywhere, nowhere to really pull off if there is a problem as it was a canyon, and it was 115 degrees and we were close to overheating. I am sure any of you that have ever owned a car that had to be nursed through know that if you are close to overheating, the first thing to do to try to cool down, is turn on the heater, which I did. So for HOURS, we were stuck in 115 degree heat, with the heater on (windows unrolled-forcing liquids on the kids the whole time), going up this canyon. It took us over 4 hours to gor 90 miles. It was miserble, and my poor husband and dad who were still in LA area awaiting their flights home. I kept calling them in tears, freaking out that I needed help when really there was nothing they could do to help me. It was so bad. But, we made it through, got to our hotel VERY late that night, and eventually made it home the next evening, Monday July 2. Wow-talk about an adventure!


Was it worth going? Yes!!! We had a great time at Disneyland and we may never get the chance again to go do something like that with the whole family. It was great! And the coolest thing was to see Cathy doing so well and enjoying herself so much as one of her dreams was coming true to have so much of her family with her in the place she loves most! It was like she was back to normal! Look at what a blast she is having!

Would I do it again? Not in a car! This is the real kicker of the whole craxy experience. The day we left Spokane, Wes was telling one of the doctors he works with about our plan, and the doctor couldn't understand why we didn't just fly. Evidently there is an airline here in Spokane that only flys to like 4 places (one of which is the Ontario airport RIGHT near Disneyland) and is cheap! We could have flown us all out for less that the money we spent on gas! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!