Age 6

As I mentioned when I started this series of posts, my son turned 6 last week.  After the fairly big and elaborate celebration of last year, we decided to keep everything very low key this year.  We even decided to limit the birthday celebrations to just the immediate family, although that really had more to do with logistics and scheduling than anything  else.

As our son’s main birthday treat, we decided to make a trip down to Disneyland on the Saturday before.  We have an ownership interest in the Disney’s Vacation Club timeshare and looked into the possibility of getting a reservation at the recently opened Villas at the Grand Californian, but there wasn’t any availability that night so we decided to simply make it a day trip.

We live only about an hour away from Disneyland and have passes for admission, so we do make reasonably frequent visits down there, although not nearly as often as my wife and I did when we were younger and childless.  Our last visit had been only about a month before, but was primarily for the celebration of an adult friend’s birthday.  Since that day had a bit more of a scheduled agenda, we decided to make this visit an “Andy’s choice” day, where he would pretty much get his pick of rides and activities.  For this reason, we also chose not to try and meet up with any other friends, but instead just make it a family day.

One special activity we included that day was lunch at Goofy’s Kitchen, the character dining location at the Disneyland Hotel.  Andy is still a huge fan of the Disney characters and gets a bit kick out of these meals where some of his favorites come around and visit the table.  During our meal, we had visits with Goofy, Chip & Dale, Mulan, Jasmine, Baloo (from The Jungle Book) and Brer Fox.  We also got to visit with Pluto for a couple photos before we went to our table.

The restaurant also has occasional kid participation activities and Andy had the chance to get up and do The Twist with the characters as well as to help Goofy with baking of a cake (which mostly involved kids playing noisemakers and pretending to help clean up). 

Toward the end of our visit to the restaurant, the waiter brought Andy a cupcake with a birthday candle on it and Chip plus a few of the restaurant staff members all gathered for a short birthday celebration.  It wasn’t anything overly fancy, but Andy definitely got a big kick out of it.

After lunch, we headed back into the park to visit attractions.  This included a visit to see Mickey Mouse at his house in Toontown, where everyone did give Andy a bit of extra attention for his birthday.  The birthday visit was during the first weekend that Disneyland had all of their Christmas activities up and running, so we took that opportunity to see the Christmas parade and fireworks show.  Overall, it was a fun day and Andy seemed to really enjoy himself.

For the evening of Andy’s actual birthday, he picked pork chops and mashed potatoes for his birthday dinner, a bit of a surprise since we had never really thought that pork chops was one of his favorites.  We then had the traditional ice cream cake for dessert and then let him open presents.

While he got a lot of really nice gifts, it was kind of funny that possibly the biggest hit of the bunch was the birthday card that I had picked up for him the night before.  The card is the type that has a chip in it that plays sounds when the card is opened.  It features the characters from the Disney/Pixar movie Cars and plays the song “Life is a Highway” from the movie, which has been Andy’s favorite song for quite a while.  Even though my wife had already bought another card for him, I couldn’t resist buying this one when I spotted it while shopping for a couple other items at the local Walgreens store the night before.

The main gifts this year included a couple Thomas the Tank Engine toys from my wife and me and a shirt and Mickey Mouse wristwatch from one of his sets of grandparents.  The watch was a pretty exciting gift for him as it is his first and he was pretty proud about getting a big kid’s gift like that. 

Andy’s other set of grandparents were a bit late in shipping out his gift from them (a Mr. Potato Head and full set of parts), so he had a little extra gift opening event later in the week.  That turned out to be a bit of a nice opportunity to prolong his birthday celebration a bit longer.

There was also a little celebration of his birthday in his class at school, but I don’t have any photos as neither my wife nor I were there for it.  My wife brought along a couple packages of mini-cupcakes that were distributed around to the class and the teacher gave him a small gift as well.

While this was probably a much more low key birthday than many of his past ones (particularly the year before), it still was a fun time.  Happy birthday, Andy!

Age 5

By Andy’s 5th birthday, he had completed his first full year of pre-school, as well as a couple years in a weekly Gymboree program.  Between the two, he had made a lot of friends and had also had the opportunity to attend quite a few of his friends’ birthday parties.  This led us to think that it was a good idea to celebrate his 5th birthday (something of a milestone) with his first real birthday party with other kids.

We live in a townhouse that doesn’t have a yard or an overall design that would really be suited to having a large group of kids over.  While there is a party room available for rent in our condominium complex, it isn’t really overly kid-friendly either.  We realized that we really needed to find a kid-appropriate venue for the party.

Our first thought (and Andy’s first suggestion) was Farrell’s, having spent his birthday there the two previous years.  We looked into it and found that the price wasn’t too out of line, but we had major reservations about whether or not it would really work all that well for a big group of pre-school aged kids.  Other than the little merry-go-round, Mountasia really doesn’t offer much for kids that age and we were picturing a party that was little more than the kids all sitting around a big table eating ice cream and pizza. 

Andy was still kind of pushing for having the party there, but we were able to placate him by promising a family visit there not too long after his birthday.  We ended up going up there the weekend after his birthday for dinner and ice cream, inviting a few of our adult friends to meet up with us there as well.  Of course, Andy again got in a bunch of rides on the little merry-go-round.

Having recently been to another kid’s birthday party that was held at a local play gym, we realized that it would be vastly preferable to go somewhere that the kids could run around and play.  As I mentioned, we had been taking Andy to classes at a local Gymboree Play & Music location since he was really young. 

We checked into it and found that their prices for birthday parties were within our budget and that they had availability on Andy’s actual birthday (which was on a Sunday that year).  During his weekly class, we mentioned that we were considering having his birthday party there to his teacher, who is an outstanding teacher that Andy, and we, adored.  The teacher responded by offering to host and run the party if we booked it, which pretty much instantly sealed the deal for us.

The majority of the kids from his pre-school class as well as a few of the Gymboree students attended the party, resulting in a turn-out of around 20 kids.  The Gymboree teacher and an assistant did an excellent job running the event, which had a great mix of organized play activities and free play.  The kids all seemed to have a great time and the parents seemed to enjoy watching them! 

The package we bought did not include refreshments, so we ordered a sheet cake from a local supermarket and also bought various chips and juice for the event.  We were able to get a cake that was decorated with a picture of Mickey Mouse and his friends, which was a very good fit for our son’s interests.  We also were able to find Mickey Mouse paper plates, napkins, and cups to go with it.

After the party, we went home and let him open his gifts.  He ended up with a pretty large selection of items thanks to the reasonably large turnout at the birthday party.  Fortunately, so far he doesn’t seem to be expecting that every year.  I think we did a good job of explaining to him that the 5th birthday was kind of a special one.

In addition to the big party, he had a couple smaller celebrations as well.  This was his second year at his pre-school, so he once again had the little felt cake celebration there, similar to what they did the previous year. 

His pre-school was a primarily outdoor facility and it happened to be raining on the day that they celebrated his birthday.  On that day, school was actually held at someone’s house instead of at the usual school.

A couple weeks before his birthday, my wife’s parents came out to visit and we did a small party with them as well.  We picked up a small cake and let him open the presents that they had brought him.  We couldn’t help but feel that maybe he was a tad spoiled with all these separate celebrations that year, but we also wanted to accommodate everyone that wanted to celebrate with him.

Coming soon, I’ll conclude this series with reports from this year’s birthday!

Continuing my look back at my son’s previous birthdays in celebration of him turning 6 this week, here are my memories of his 4th birthday.  As he has gotten older, I have found that I had a tendency to take more photos, so the remaining posts will cover just one year at a time.

Age 4 (2007)

Andy’s 3rd birthday was the first that he still remembered pretty well a year later.  Because of that, he decided that he wanted to do pretty much the same thing as the year before, returning once again to Farrell’s.  This time, we decided to forgo the formal birthday package and instead just let everyone order whatever they wanted off of the menu.

As with the previous year’s visit, we included some play time in the game area at Mountasia.  Once again, Andy used the majority of the game/ride credits that we got for him to ride on the little merry-go-round.  During this visit, he did also give skee-ball a try for the first time, although I really was doing most of the work.

A couple months before his 4th birthday, Andy started his first year of pre-school.  For birthday kids, the teacher had a short celebration where the child was given a birthday crown and allowed to put candles onto a felt birthday cake. 

Finally, we did also do the now-traditional cake and gift-opening at home on his actual birthday.  Once again, the cake was an ice cream cake.

He had received most of his major gifts during the party at Farrell’s, but we gave him a toy fire truck that I had found at a really good sale price between the two parties and he also had gifts from his grandparents to open.

To Be Continued with Memories of Age 5.

Age 1 (2004)

To celebrate his first birthday, we attended the Disneyland Birthday Celebration that they offer a couple times a day at the Plaza Inn restaurant on Main Street.  At this event, everyone gets an undecorated cupcake along with small cups containing frosting and sprinkles to use to decorate them.  A character named Pat E. Cake hosts the event and Mickey and Minnie Mouse also pay a visit.  Quite a few of our friends were able to join us at the park for the party as well.

The first birthday also started our now usual tradition of going out somewhere for a bigger party, but also having a little family-only party at home with cake and the opening of his presents from us and various relatives.

This was also the one time that we attempted to make his birthday cake instead of buying one from the store, but we found that we generally lacked much cake decorating talent.

Age 2 (2005)

Andy’s 2nd birthday was probably his most low key birthday celebration to date.  Originally, his grandparents (my wife’s parents) were planning to come out and visit during his birthday.  Pretty close to the last minute, the trip was postponed until early December.  This led us to do a small party at home with just us.  A trip to Disneyland the following weekend gave us an opportunity to get together with some of our friends, but that wasn’t really treated as a birthday party.

For this birthday, we bought an ice cream cake from the grocery store, which he enjoyed very much.  In fact, the ice cream cake has now become something of a birthday tradition for the family.  Generally, Andy wants us to get one for his birthday each year and also strongly encourages my wife and me to have them for our birthdays as well.  It looks like I somehow didn’t get any pictures of the cake that year, but I did get several of him eating it and the aftermath.

Of course, he also had quite a bit of fun opening his birthday presents, which were mostly toys that year.  This was, I think, really the first time that he was very aware that the packages all contained fun things for him.  I find it pretty funny that the photos generally show him with such a serious expression of concentration.  Opening gifts is serious business!

Age 3 (2006)

For Andy’s 3rd birthday, we decided to take him to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour in Santa Clarita.  Farrell’s was a very popular, party-oriented chain of restaurants when I was a kid, but it pretty much went out of business in the 1980s.  In recent years, new owners have been working to revive the chain and the Santa Clarita location (which is located inside the Mountasia Fun Center) was the first location they opened.  Remembering the fun we had there as kids, it seemed like a perfect place to take our son.

We decided to go ahead and buy one of their formal birthday packages, which included pizza, small ice cream sundaes, drinks, and a number of Mountasia game/ride tokens.  Andy ended up using the majority of the game tokens for repeated rides on a little coin-operated merry-go-round.  For some reason, he has a kind of sad-looking expression in all the photos that I took of him riding the merry-go-round, but I promise that he really did seem to be having lots of fun on it!

This was the first year that my wife and I decided to try and get Andy the hottest toy of the year as his birthday present, which was the special 10th anniversary “TMX” edition of Tickle-Me-Elmo.  This toy was difficult to find, having been very much in demand following a generally impressive demonstration on Good Morning America on TV.  After several weeks on a waiting list, but were able to get it from a local toy store in time for his birthday.  While we found the toy pretty amusing, it actually was never really all that popular with Andy.  In fact, he found it kind of scary at the birthday party and he never warmed to it entirely.

The Farrell’s party was actually the second of two birthday parties that we had for Andy that year.  My wife’s parents visited a couple weeks before and we had a pre-birthday party where we served another ice cream cake and let him open his presents from that set of grandparents.

To Be Continued…

For the past several years, my family has been going to Disneyland on the 4th of July to see their special fireworks show.  We have learned how best to manage the crowds on that very busy day, making it a pretty easy experience.  We also get a hotel room close-by in order to avoid having to deal with the night-time traffic.

When I was growing up, more often than not we spent 4th of July at home instead of trying to go out to see a professional fireworks show or some other public event.  Generally, we were pretty satisfied simply enjoying the day at home as a family.  This would usually include watching the Boston Pops’ 4th of July concert on TV or other similar patriotic shows.  We would often have a BBQ dinner at home.  There were a few years that we did go out to municipal fireworks displays, though, so I did at least have that experience a few times as a kid. 

The most memorable trip out to see a 4th of July fireworks show was in 1977.  That summer, my father had just taken a new job that required our family to move from Florida to Flint, Michigan.  For the first couple months, we had to find an alternative place to live while we were waiting for the house my family had purchased to be vacant and ready for us.  We had a Starcraft pop-up style camper that we used on vacations, so we spent that time staying at the Holly Hills Campground (based on an online search, I think it is a KOA now) in nearby Holly, which was just a short distance outside of Flint.

On that 4th, we decided to drive into Flint for their big municipal fireworks show downtown, but it ended up being Mother Nature that put on the more memorable performance that night.  There was a huge rainstorm and I honestly can’t remember for certain whether or not the fireworks display actually took place, although I think it did.  The most memorable part was returning that evening to learn that a tornado had touched down in the campground while we were gone!  We were lucky that the actual touchdown (and most of the damage) was on the opposite end from where our campsite was located, which meant that our camper was ok.  It was definitely a bit of a fright and still is the closest call with a tornado that I ever experienced.

I don’t remember completely for certain, but I don’t think we ever went out to public events on the 4th of July in any of the other years that we lived in Flint, instead opting for celebration at home.  In the late 70s and early 80s, Michigan had pretty loose restrictions on the sale of fireworks for home use, which meant that every supermarket had big display tables with a big selection of firecrackers, sparklers, roman candles, bottle rockets, and other similar items.  My parents were appropriately nervous about these types of things, though, and would only allow us to get some sparklers, which we would only use with close supervision.

Many of the neighbors did buy and use the other kinds of home fireworks, which meant that there was always a sort of second-hand display that we were able to watch a bit on the evening of the 4th.  On the 5th, the neighborhood streets would be very littered with the spent casings from many of the fireworks and firecrackers that had been set off the night before. 

My best friend and I had a tradition, which we obviously never told our parents about (this post may end up as a confession…), walking through the neighborhood on the 5th examining the litter from the night before searching for accidentally discarded fireworks and firecrackers that had not yet been fired.  Each year, we found and gathered up quite a bit of stuff that was still live.  I remember one year we even found an unexploded cherry bomb, which was a particularly exciting find for a couple pre-teen boys.  I don’t remember exactly what we did, but I remember that it was never much of a problem finding a spot outside of eye and earshot of parents in order to light off everything we found.

Regardless of whether I just stayed at home with family or went out to do something special for the holiday, my memories of the 4th of July are pretty much all positive.  Here’s hoping for another great 4th of July holiday tomorrow.  Happy Birthday, USA!

The Candlelight Processional is a long running holiday tradition at Disneyland.  It is a concert program that they typically run around the first week of December, which is a musical celebration of the religious aspect of the Christmas holiday, featuring a professional orchestra and a large massed choir formed from numerous church and school choirs as well as some Disney employees.  The show also features a celebrity narrator, who tells the Biblical Christmas story in between the songs.  This show has been a favorite Christmas season tradition for me for as long as I have lived out here in Southern California.  It is something I really look forward to every year.

Traditionally, this concert is performed on a stage set up in the Town Square area of Main Street, with the Railroad Station used as the backdrop.  In most years, there are just 4 evening performances of the show, two each on Saturday and Sunday.  The majority of the Town Square area is blocked off for the stage as well as for a large seating area.  Tickets for viewing the show in the seating area are mainly distributed to Disney’s corporate partners and other VIPs while regular park guests start staking out seats early to the sides and further back in order to get even an obstructed view of the show.

This can result in a lot of logistics problems and major bottlenecks in that part of the park on those days.  Because of this, Disney a fairly short-lived (5 years) experiment starting in 1998 of moving the show to the Fantasyland Theater, an outdoor performance venue located across from "It’s a Small World".  Walt Disney World had moved their version of the show from Town Square in the Magic Kingdom to a similar theater in Epcot a few years earlier and had eventually managed to expand it multiple shows a night throughout the holiday season, with reserved seating tickets being sold through popular dining packages.  There was a lot of speculation that this experiment with a change of venue at Disneyland was also hoped to eventually lead to a similar expansion of the program, although that never materialized and the show was finally moved back to Main Street starting in 2003.

Since the vast majority of the tickets to the show were still distributed to VIPs, the move to the Fantasyland Theater had an effect of pretty substantially reducing the availability of the show to the general public.  Unlike the Main Street location, guests that were outside of the theater would not really be able to see or hear much, if any, of the show.  The only options were really to either figure out a way to obtain tickets or to wait in a stand-by line outside the theater and hope to get the opportunity to fill-in leftover space (mostly due to no-shows) available right before the show started.

A few days ahead of time, Disney publicly announced that there would be a very limited number of tickets available to the general public the morning of each of the two show days.  The announcement stated that the tickets would be available on a first-come, first-served basis at the entrance to the theater immediately after park opening and that each guest arriving would be able to request a maximum of 6 tickets.  With the expected very limited availability, it quickly became evident that they would all be distributed very quickly and that it would be necessary to rush to the theater as quickly as possible after park opening to get a chance at them. 

Back in 1998, I was a very active participant on the old alt.disney.disneyland Usenet discussion group.  The local participants on that board had established a weekly meet at the park every Sunday at noon, which I attended just about every week.  Quite a few of the regulars there were interested in seeing the show, although a lot of people didn’t have the ability to easily get down to the park right at opening on a Sunday morning.  Since I was still fairly young and unattached at the time, I decided that I did want to try for tickets and I volunteered to pick up the full 6 ticket maximum so that I could share with some of the other members of the group.

The Saturday morning ticket distribution went pretty much as everyone (except, apparently, those at Disney that came up with this plan) would probably expect.  Locals that wanted tickets arrived as early as possible and got into position as far in as possible during the pre-opening period where only Main Street is usually available.  There was a mad, not particularly safe dash from the "rope drop" location at the end of Main Street to the theater right after park opening and the available tickets were all distributed within about 10 minutes or so.  This was widely reported in the online forums available at the time (mostly the newsgroups) and the story even got picked up by the Orange County Register newspaper.  I think Disney was between a rock and a hard place for Sunday, as Saturday’s distribution had shown them the problems but they couldn’t really change the announced procedures at the last moment.

On Sunday morning, I headed down to the park as early as I could and arrived a little over an hour before the announced park opening time.  After parking and taking the tram over to the entrance area, I quickly ran into another friend from the newsgroup and joined him in line at the turnstiles.  Once the park opened, we quickly made our way to the end of Main Street and positioned ourselves right by the rope.  It was pretty obvious that just about everyone waiting right by the rope was there for Candlelight tickets. 

While we were waiting at the rope, my friend recognized the sister of one of the other regulars from the newsgroup.  I hadn’t met her before, but knew her brother fairly well.  He had even mentioned to me a few weeks before that his sister was going to be moving down from Northern California and would probably start showing up at some of the park meets.  She was there for the Candlelight tickets as well, hoping to get tickets for her and her brother.  The three of us spent some time chatting while waiting for rope drop at the park’s official opening time.

For those of us trying for tickets, rope drop was much like the start of a marathon.  As soon as the park was opened, everyone headed to the Fantasyland Theater in as fast a sprint as they could manage.  Disney did post some employees along the route to the theater who made a few futile attempts to call for people to slow down, but who were clearly really there mainly to keep the pathway open and to be ready to attend to anyone that fell or otherwise became injured.  I really hated running through the park like that, but I knew it was the only possible way to get tickets.

My friend and I managed to pretty much stick together during the run and ended up in roughly the same position in line.  There were a fair number of people that made it into line ahead of us, but we were close enough to the front to get tickets.  Unfortunately, the girl had fallen behind by quite a bit and was considerably further back in line.  They did run out before she got to the front of the line, so my friend and I each quickly gave her one of our extra tickets for her and and her brother to use. 

In order to get to the entrance faster, my friend had parked at the Millie’s Restaurant on Harbor Blvd. and walked over instead of dealing with the extra time involved with the toll booths and trams for the Disneyland parking lot.  He needed to go back over to move his car and suggested the three of us all go over and get breakfast at Millie’s.  We all agreed that was a good idea and enjoyed sitting down for a leisurely table service meal after the morning’s excitement.  It was also a nice opportunity to get to know the newcomer to our group a bit.

After breakfast, my friend headed off to move his car to the Disneyland lot while the girl and I walked back to the park.  By the time we got back, it was still an hour and a half or so until the noon meet.  While it probably would have been logical for the two of us to have spent that time riding rides together or something like that, we both were pretty introverted and shy and instead just went off our separate ways.

At this point, I’m sure that anyone that knows me and my family at all well knows where this is going, regardless of having heard this story before or not.  Over the next few weeks, I did get to know the girl, her name is Ilene, better and started spending more time hanging out with her at the Sunday meets as well as a few other group gatherings that were scheduled that month.  I even had Christmas dinner with her and her brother (as well as the other friend from the Candlelight stampede) at one of the Disney hotel restaurants.  We hung around together quite a bit on New Years Eve at the park as well.

We finally got around to exchanging email addresses and IM screennames in early January and finally went on our first official date towards the end of that month.  Ilene and I were married a little under 2 years later and recently celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary.  While that Sunday morning in early December 1998 is probably one that Disneyland would generally rather be forgotten, it is definitely one that worked out extremely well for us.  Although the logistics still sometimes can be very difficult, although not as bad as in 1998, we still look forward to seeing the show every year (sometimes in Florida, including this year) as it holds very special meaning for us.

We left for the park around 11am and I was pretty surprised at how heavy the traffic on the south 5 freeway was.  In the past, I’ve usually found that traffic is pretty light on Thanksgiving, but the drive this time turned out to be pretty slow-going.  We didn’t see indications of any accidents or other problems, so I suspect that our timing was such that there were just a lot of people heading down to Orange County or San Diego for holiday gatherings.  The drive wasn’t particularly unpleasant, though, and we enjoyed listening to the Christmas music station on XM satellite radio during the drive.  Thanksgiving is the first day that I’m generally willing to start listening to Christmas music, even though it seems like some stations start playing it earlier every year.

We occasionally switched over to the traffic reports on XM, but didn’t get any information from that either.  We found it weird when they were reporting one major incident on “southbound I-10”, considering that the 10 is an east-west freeway.  Eventually, we figured out that the traffic reporter was misreading the first digit of “110” as an “I”.  We often find the traffic reports on there a bit amusing since the reporters are clearly not in Southern California and often seriously butcher pronunciations.  It is particularly fun listening to some of them trying to pronounce “Cahuenga” or “Sepulveda”.

By the time we actually got into the park, it was close to 1pm.  During a previous Thanksgiving visit, we had eaten at Carnation Restaurant on Main Street and had found that to be an especially good choice.  It is a table-service restaurant, which is preferable to cafeteria style for Thanksgiving dinner, and the Americana setting of Main Street just seems exceptionally suited to the holiday.  We were briefly concerned that the weather was a bit drizzly and overcast and the restaurant has all outdoor seating, but the weather was already clearing by the time we got there and we noted that they had large umbrella coverings over all the tables, so we decided to go ahead with it.  Even though we didn’t have reservations, we were seated with only about a 15 minute or so wait.

When they brought the menus and explained to us about the special Thanksgiving dinner, we immediately ran into a very large irritation, although it was one that wasn’t entirely unexpected based on a previous experience.  Despite the fact that it was Thanksgiving and the fact that Disneyland is obviously well-known for attracting families with small children, they were not offering a children’s portion of the turkey dinner.  Basically, children had to either order the adult portion (at the full price) or settle for a choice of chicken strips, macaroni & cheese, or PB&J.  Our 5-year-old most certainly was not going to willingly accept anything other than a turkey dinner, which is one of his favorite meals even when it isn’t Thanksgiving.

When this came up 2-years ago (and our son was only 3), we ended up escalating the issue to a manager and eventually the chef actually came out and offered to prepare a half-portion for our son.  He also instructed the servers to make that option available to any other families and we saw several other families order the same while we were at the restaurant.  I had hoped that after that experience they would start simply placing it on the menu, but I guess that didn’t happen.

Our son’s appetite has grown quite a bit and, quite honestly, we just weren’t in the mood to go through the big hassle of escalating the issue again this year.  Therefore, we just went ahead and ordered 3 adult meals.  We figured my wife and I can also augment our own meals a bit, if it proved to be too much food.  The portions were really quite large, though, and he did end up leaving some of the turkey (and most of the stuffing) on the plate, even after we did both take some of his food as our own second helpings.  We did see other children in the restaurant also struggling through the large portions and I suspect they ended up with a bunch of waste.  In retrospect, I do kind of wish that we had made more of an issue out of it again.

The food was generally pretty good, although we did agree on one complaint.  The gravy used on the potatoes and turkey was quite a bit more salty than it should have been.  It certainly didn’t help that it didn’t occur to me to test it before adding a little additional salt.  It still wasn’t bad enough to warrant sending the food back, but I did find myself scraping off much of the gravy.  Other than that, the turkey was served hot and wasn’t overly dry and the potatoes and stuffing were good as well.  The meal also came with some cooked vegetables which aren’t to my taste (I really don’t like any cooked veggies other than corn) and some fresh cranberry sauce and a dinner roll.  With the obvious caveats above, it was a pretty decent Thanksgiving meal for about $15/person and the location certainly was top-notch for it.

While pumpkin pie was available as a special Thanksgiving-only dessert option, none of us really care for that and decided to opt out from it.  Instead, we got ice cream sundaes from the Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor as our dessert and enjoyed them while listening to the piano player at Refreshment Corner.  One of Disneyland’s long-standing traditions for the holiday season is to offer special seasonal food choices at some locations and one of my absolute favorite is peppermint stick ice cream.  That was a key motivation for me wanting to get ice cream for dessert and it was as good as ever.

During the remainder of the afternoon, we took the opportunity to enjoy some of the park’s special offerings for the holidays.  This included two rides (one during the day and one after dark) on It’s a Small World, which they have been extensively decorating for the holidays for a number of years now.  That is something we look forward to every year and we were particularly excited to see this time, since the attraction had been down for a major refurbishment since the beginning of the year.  We only noticed a few minor changes (most notable being all new boats), but everything looked to be in excellent condition.  This is a very popular attraction during the holidays, but the lines were very short (10 minutes or so) each time.  Thanksgiving just isn’t a very busy day at the park.

Other than the two rides on Small World and one ride on King Arthur’s Carrousel, we didn’t actually do any other rides that day.  Instead, we spent some time looking at the various decorations as well as paying a visit to the "Reindeer Roundup" area on Big Thunder Trail to see the pardoned national turkeys (who usually end up at Disneyland after the ceremony with the president) and pay a visit to Santa Goofy.  We also enjoyed a walk through the newly re-opened and updated Sleeping Beauty dioramas in the castle.  This had been closed for about 7 years and it was nice to see it return.  After dark, while my wife went off to do some shopping, my son and I enjoyed sitting for a while at the hub waiting for and watching the lighting ceremony where they turn on the elaborate Christmas lights on the castle.

We left the park for home around 7:30pm or so and found traffic to be fairly light for the drive home.  We made a couple attempts to see if we could find any fast food restaurants opened for a small and quick dinner, but found that everything we checked was closed.  I guess there just isn’t much demand for McDonalds or Burger King on Thanksgiving. While we were getting a bit hungry by the time we made it home (and fixed some hot dogs), I did think it was nice that those places let their employees spend the holiday evening wieh their families.

This was a nice Thanksgiving and, despite some complaints about the meal, I felt we made a good choice as to how to spend the day.

My wife and I have really had a great time playing up the Santa story and helping him to build his excitement. A couple weeks ago, we sat down with him one evening and let him dictate the traditional letter to Santa. His requests were for “An airplane present”, “a blanket”, “paper” (he has been very into drawing and coloring lately), and “more presents”. We were especially amused that he has already learned to hedge his bets with the final “catch-all” request. This letter was written a couple evenings before a babysitter was coming over while we went out to finish our Christmas shopping. We took the letter along that evening and reported that we were going out to deliver it to Santa.

Of course, it was also important that he eventually get a chance to meet Santa himself and directly tell him when he wanted for Christmas. Prior to Andy starting pre-school, every Tuesday my wife used to take him to the Borders Book Store at Northridge Fashion Square for an excellent toddler story time. One week before Christmas, he was already out of school for the holiday, so she took advantage of the chance to take him back to Borders. It turned out that Santa paid a visit to the kids, providing a great chance for our son to meet him up close and for Mom to get a few pictures. Happily, he wasn’t intimidated at all by Santa and pretty much ran right up to him. I only wish that I hadn’t been working that day and could have been there for that myself.

For years, NORAD has tracked Santa, providing various media outlets with Christmas Eve updates on his location. Not surprisingly, they more recently went to offering this directly via a website and this year they teamed up with Google to offer a downloadable add-in for Google Earth, providing up-to-the-minute updates. We kept that running throughout the evening and shifts in the tracking were frequently accompanied by Andy excitedly asking “Where is Santa now?”

We also made a big deal of the other major traditions. On Monday afternoon, we retrieved Christmas stockings from the closet and made a big deal about hanging them up by the chimney. Even before we became parents, my wife and I have had an ongoing tradition where we would buy stocking stuffers for one another. Because of this, we have and hung up stockings for all three of us. During our daily reading time (we make it a point to read to Andy very regularly), we made it a point to read him “The Night Before Christmas” in order to once again reiterate the story. Finally, before heading on to bed, we made a big deal about putting out a plate of cookies and a glass of chocolate milk for Santa. It was funny that Andy initially kept insisting that “Santa doesn’t like cookies”, until we finally convinced him to put some out by telling him that he could have one too. My wife and I did make sure that there were only crumbs and an empty glass by morning…

After Andy was definitely asleep, Santa did deliver the gifts. Surprisingly, toy airplanes that are suited for toddlers are not easy to find right now, but Santa ended up bringing a fun little airport play set that was available from Kaybee Toys. This set included a die-cast airplane as well as various airport vehicles and signs. The set was available with logos from most of the major airlines. Santa brought the Delta Airlines version, since that was the airline we took for our recent Florida trip.

The request for a blanket was fulfilled with one featuring the characters Lightening McQueen and Mater from the movie “Cars”. Andy is a big fan of that movie and those characters, like most boys his age right now. In addition, the blanket nicely matches a bed-sheet set that he already had. The blanket was spread out on the floor and the other items were all put on top of it.

Santa also had one unexpected surprise gift for him. Our son is a big fan of the Playhouse Disney series “Little Einsteins” and one of the hot toys this year is Pat-Pat Rocket, an interactive toy that is based on the rocket ship from the series. Our son didn’t know about the existence of the toy, so he didn’t know to ask for it. It is something that he definitely is enjoying very, very much. This is a Target-exclusive product that was not particularly easy to find in-stock this year, so he was lucky that one of Santa’s elves happened to stop by a local Target store just as they were putting out stock one day…

Of course, he also got lots of other great presents and toys from other relatives and friends. One set of grandparents got him a remote controlled truck and a nice dress shirt. The other grandparents got him a toy workbench, which did provide our most challenging assembly project of the year. I suppose that is one of the way that grandparents have to get back at their own children for difficult tasks faced years earlier.

Gifts from friends included a Little Einsteins drawing pad (essentially a Magna-Doodle with some stencils and audio effects) and a Cars backpack, both of which he will enjoy quite a bit. He has actually gone through several Magna-Doodles over the last couple years as he uses them a lot and generally ends up wearing them out. He was at a point where he needed a new one and this one is a particularly good choice for him. The backpack is something that he will enjoy as well, probably using it quite a bit during our frequent trips to Disneyland and other theme parks.

My wife and I got him a LeapFrog Click-Start computer, which is essentially a toddler-targeted computer that hooks to the TV and is controlled by a wireless keyboard and mouse. We think this will provide him with a lot of fun as well as quite a bit of educational value. We also picked up some of the available game cartridges for the computer, wrapping up two of them (“Toy Story” and “Animal Art Studio”) as extra gifts under the tree. He has already gotten a lot of use out of this over the past several days since Christmas and is quickly getting pretty proficient with it. I think this will hold his interest for a long time, although I do hope that they continue to release more cartridges for it over time.

As much fun as it was, this wasn’t a perfect Christmas by any means. I woke up Christmas morning with a bit of an upset stomach and Andy’s stomach didn’t seem to be in the best shape that morning either. Because of this, we decided to call and postpone the reservations we had for a nice Christmas buffet (at the Universal City Hilton) until New Year’s Day instead. This turned out to be a good decision as I ended up really sick with a bad stomach bug by late in the day. That definitely wasn’t my preferred way to spend Christmas evening.

Despite that setback, we still really did enjoy this Christmas and it was a real joy seeing the holiday through Andy’s eyes. As you can probably tell from the contents of this post, Andy did focus primarily on the more festive aspects of Christmas (Santa, gifts, the Christmas tree, etc.) rather than the religious meaning behind the holiday. We did talk to him some about the story of Jesus, although the story is a bit hard to grasp for a 4-year-old mind. One thing I tried in particular was telling him that all the celebrations on Christmas were really a birthday party for an extremely important child that was born many years ago. While that probably was a bit overwhelmed by the more directly accessible to him parts of the holiday, I hope it did at least plant the idea of the holiday’s meaning in his mind.

Personally, I’m not really in strong agreement with those that argue that Santa Claus and gifts tend to overwhelm the holiday’s true meaning. While I think that can happen to some degree with adults, I basically believe that Santa is really a pretty child-friendly way of at least beginning to introduce the key messages that dominated Jesus’ teachings. Santa is a selfless individual who focuses his entire life on giving to others. Sounds pretty familiar to me.