Lost Post

Here is a post I found in my Drafts folder. Oops. It's from February, I think. Enjoy:

This weekend started off with Sweetie and I doing what parents do, worrying about our kids. In particular, we were worried about our kids not having anyone to play with in our small town, and whether they were feeling lonely. As is frequently the case, parents fears out-scale actual problems, and right now we are satisfied that our kids are pretty happy.

One thing that helped us (and maybe them, too) was plenty of quality family time this weekend. I was just coming back from a week-long trip to the mainland, so I had some chores to do around the house (fixing the fence, putting out the new hose, fixing my computer), but afterwards, Calvin and I went out to play with his new glow-in-the-dark soccer ball while Sweetie and Hobbes walked down to the beach to look at the very low tide.

After kicking the ball around for a while, we played at the playground (as an adult, I still enjoy swinging on a swing), and then decided to walk down to the beach. Guess who we ran into? Right! The rest of the family. So we strolled together on the beach. It was a beautiful day - sunny, warm, light winds. A very nice outside time.

Sunday we decided go for a boat ride. We went out on the dock dingy to fetch the boat from a mooring, and before we even got to the boat, we noticed some cetaceans swimming about out by the reef, so we just tooled on out there in the dingy. It was a pod of Risso's dolphins. We watched them for a few minutes, and then went to get the boat. Our expedition took us out around Bird Rock and past Ship Rock. I'm not sure what's going on with sea lions, but there were tons of them swimming about and basking (with their flippers sticking out of the water) all around and between Bird and Ship today.
On our way from Ship Rock down towards Emerald Bay, we encountered a pod of about 12 bottlenose dolphins. They were curious and swam right by us. We could see them under and next to the boat. We circled around a few times with them playing in our wake. This was turning out to be quite a day!

We motored around Arrow Point and down towards Starlight Beach (which is one terminus of the Trans-Catalina Trail). As we were turning around to go home, we spotted ANOTHER pod of Risso's. They were moving towards Land's End, so we just watched from a distance.

I let Hobbes drive the boat some on the way home and we talked about boating: radio channels to use, boating etiquette, what a dive flag looks like, and avoiding sea life (including kelp). As we got back around Howland's Landing, we ran into either another or the same pod of bottlenoses. And they played again, both in our bow and stern wakes. We got really nice views of them swimming and leaping. Eventually they went back to fishing, and we continued towards the Isthmus.

As we got back into Isthmus Cove, we saw that the pod of Risso's that we'd first seen were still hunting around the reef. I was hoping to get a little closer to them this time, but they are much shyer than their smaller cousins and dove when we got too close.

We felt very lucky to have been out on the water today!

Disneyland Report Card

It's Spring Break for the Long Beach School District (which the schools on Catalina are in), so we decided to have a little fun. This mostly will consist of dentist appointments and camp physicals (which will occur next week), but Sweetie and I decided that first we would do something purely fun with the boys.

We chose not to tell the boys until we were practically at the park, and they were initially shocked into silence (I think), but quite giddy once we parked and got out of the car.

My first comment is that Disneyland seems much smaller acreage-wise than Disney World, which makes sense, since Disneyland is shoe-horned into Anaheim, while Disney World has the run of central Florida. Besides that, they look very much the same (duh). Everyone was happy to see us. We talked with the boys some about how Disney's close attention to customer service was a big factor in their success. (That's the kind of parents we are: suck the wonder out of everything.)

We started the day in Tomorrowland at Space Mountain. When we went to Disney World in 2010, we didn't get a chance to ride this one, so we decided to make up for that oversight. Maybe an odd choice for 10am, but there we were. When I was a kid, age 8 I think, we went to Disney World and rode Space Mountain. I was scared, so I closed my eyes the whole time. My mom commented that I didn't miss much, and who's idea was a roller coaster in the dark? This time I was determined to keep my eyes open. An my mom was right. Pretty dark, I have to say - and faster than I thought it would be.

On that same trip in 2010, Thing 2 was a little too freaked out to really enjoy the park, however this time he was game for just about anything. Over the day we did some intense rides like the updated Star Tours ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and the Indiana Jones Adventure and tamer fare like the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Jungle Cruise and the Enchanted Tiki Room. We stayed all the way through the (outstanding) fireworks display, and had a tremendous time. I would say thanks to Disney for a day of family fun, but I think I spoke with my wallet yesterday.

As before, here are attraction ratings. If you're curious about details as to the why for these ratings, leave a comment:

Attraction	Me	Sweetie	Hobbes	Calvin
Space Mountain	B	A	A+++	A
Star Tours	B+	C	A++	A+
Jungle Cruise	C	B	A	A
Enchanted Tiki Room	C	C+	B	A
Indiana Jones Adventure	A	A	C	A-
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad	A	A	A	A+++
Autopia	C	n/a	n/a	A
Mark Twain Riverboat	B	B	B	A
Big Thunder Ranch	D	n/a	n/a	A-
Pirates of the Carribean	n/a	B+	A-	n/a
The Mad Tea Party	A	n/a	n/a	A+
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage	B	B+	A-	A
Disneyland Railroad	B	C+	A	B+
King Arthur Carousel	A	n/a	B+	A+
Pinocchio's Daring Journey	n/a	B-	B-	n/a

Oh, and the fireworks show gets a big A+. Tinkerbell flying around the castle was pretty awesome.