We’re on vacation! In Disneyland! With my parents! And it is SO warm and sunny, such a nice break from the wind and rain up in the Pacific Northwest. We only arrived yesterday, but already much has happened. Including black eyes, visits to the ER, and brush fires. Woo-hoo!

The plane ride down was pretty uneventful, which is such an amazing thing to say when you’re flying with kids. When we arrived at our hotel however, things got a little more interesting. When we got out of the car, we could smell something burning, and we noticed ash falling out of the sky, dusting everything with little snow-like flakes. It turns out there is a huge fire a few miles away. The wind changed today, so there is less ash, but you can see an enormous cloud of smoke billowing up out of the distance, blowing a thick brown line across the sky.

We spent today trying to recover from last night. Last night, Zibbit woke up with a painful barking cough and trouble breathing- textbook croup symptoms. She has had it before, so we knew that if she didn’t start to improve soon, we would have to take her to the doctor for the oral steroid medicine that would control the swelling in her throat. She wasn’t able to go back to sleep, and her breathing was getting worse, so we decided to run her to the children’s hospital nearby. As we were looking up the directions, we heard a loud thump from the next room. Babs started screaming, and we ran to her room to find her crumpled on the floor. She had fallen out of bed, and hit her eye on the corner of the wooden nightstand next to her bed. Bruised and bloody, Babs was crying so hard that she could barely breathe. When she did inhale, we could hear the telltale rasping sounds of croup coming from her too. We packed them both up, and headed off to the ER. Babs was better by the time we saw the doctor, so only Zibbit got the medicine. We came back to the hotel, and crashed out until the kids woke up at 8:00 this morning. And here, folks, is the benefit of traveling with your parents: they watched the kids for another two hours so Ammon and I could sleep.

When we finally dragged ourselves out of bed at 10:00, the kids were raring to go, so we got everyone dressed and went to Disneyland. Babs and Zibbit enjoyed the rides, especially the flying Dumbos! But the highlight of the day was meeting the princesses, who blew us all away with their amazing interactions with the kids. Not only did they look and talk exactly (freakishly) like the princess they were playing, but they really connected with each child they spoke to, making them feel so special and loved.

Babs even got a kiss from Ariel next to her black eye.

I’ll be scarce all this week, we won’t be returning until Saturday. Hopefully the rest of the week will be illness and injury free!