Of course it would help if Mother Nature cooperated, but she is a fickle female if ever there was on. Yesterday, April 1, it snowed. With all the rain and snow so late in the season, it’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that’s it’s spring. But – now that I’ve come to terms with the reality of the season, I really want it to be spring-like outside. Now that I’m fully aware that it’s April, I’ve suddenly developed cabin fever and I want out of here! I need to ditch these winter duldrums and welcome warmer weather with open arms.

So, in my mind I’ve officially accepted spring. It’s time to work on the tan, dig out the tank tops and shorts, dust off the flip flops and whip up an icy margarita! In fact, I’ve gone from cabin fever to spring fever in a mere 24 hours. I need to get out of here, see the world, soak up some sun!

But, I can’t go AWOL just yet. Vacation’s not for another couple of months. Dang it!

In the meantime I’m vacationing in my mind. Today I took a little cyber stroll down memory lane and compiled a photo album of fun vacation’s past to share with you. I hope you’ll enjoy the next couple of minutes mentally vacationing with me. I will be your narrator and tour guide as we go along.

Enjoy!

This was an awesome find on my trip to Walt Disney World in 2009!

The Writer's Stop at Disney's Hollywood Studios!

This little hidey hole was a great find because later that same day we rode out a thunder storm in this shop while sipping hot chocolate and thumbing through a wide variety of books!

Here is my hubby having a little pre-show fun with his 3-D glasses at Mickey’s Philharmonic in Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World.

Here I am developing my musical talent at the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue at the Wilderness Lodge campgrounds at Walt Disney Word. My skills improved considerably as I consumed more wine.

And no trip to Disney World would be complete without some pictures of Cinderella’s beautiful color-changing castle and fireworks!

In 2010 my husband and I took a mini vacation to Disneyland (we’re Disney geeks in case you didn’t notice by now) where we saw the most recent entertainment addition to Disney’s California Adventure Park, The World of Color light, laser and water extravaganza! I got this awesome photo just as the show was ending.

And who can resist a spin in a pink teacup?

In 2011 my husband and dad and I took a day trip to Yosemite and got some beautiful shots of the valley floor, Half Dome and numerous water falls.

Here are some pictures of sunny places from our Caribbean cruise starting with an awesome shot of Miami Beach, followed by three shots of St. John and then sunset over the bay at St. Thomas.

This is me wondering why in the heck I didn’t wear my bathing suit! Most likely it was my husband’s fault. Yeah, that’s it.

And a fun get-away to Mexico in December of 2008 with my husband and our nieces and nephew.  The first photo is a nice lunch buffet on the beach in Matazlan. I’m the one with the cool shades. Next to me is my niece Jennifer. Across from Jennifer is her twin Zach and behind Zach is their big sister, Stephanie. Good times! Good food! Pay no attention to the date in these photos. I forgot to remove the date stamper thingey mabob from the camera settings. (I’m a dork that way.)

Next stop is Cabo San Lucas for a little lunch, tequila tasting and bug munching for dessert. That’s right, I said bugs. I ate a bug. On purpose. Again with my really cool shades, I explain the correct way to enjoy tequila – shake, shoot, squeeze, repeat. My nephew is just under the legal drinking age in Mexico, but he played it cool and sat at the big kids’ table with me and his older sister. It’s obvious from the looks on their faces that they do not play drinking games on a regular basis. (That’s a good thing!) Me on the other hand . . . .

After sampling the different tequilas, we are ready for our dessert. I had an unusual reaction after crunching up my locust (or maybe it was a cricket). It wasn’t bad.  Zach seemed to enjoy his; Stephanie, not so much. A little tequila and insects never hurt anyone.

Lesson to nieces and nephew - what happens in Mexico does not necessarily stay in Mexico. (First I corrupt them, then I exploit them. What are aunts for?)

So now, does seeing this make you want to go on vacation as much as I do? Where’s your favorite vacation spot? I’d love to hear about a fun trip you took.

Word of the day: Evaginate

Fun fact about me: I love to color in coloring books!

At the end of January, I visited, for the first time, the most famous theme park in the world: Disneyland. I had a wonderful time with my friends Heidi, Tom, and Keith – click here to read about it and see pictures. I had gotten a good deal on a park ticket, too – Disney offers southern California residents a 2-day pass for $99 (a basic 1-day pass is $80). And that meant that I had to go back to Disney a second time before my pass expired in June.

Luckily for me, there are two Disney theme parks in Anaheim. There’s the classic Disneyland, and the much newer Disney California Adventure, which is literally a few hundred feet away. So on Monday, I gathered up Heidi, Tom and Keith again, and we checked out Disney California Adventure. I love a theme park I’ve never been to before!

DCA opened about 10 years ago – it was built where the Disneyland parking lot used to be – and since I had never been there before, I had no idea what to expect. I had briefly heard about a few of the rides but knew very little about the park. Heidi and Keith are Disney junkies that know everything about everything – the perfect theme park companions!

I’m squinting in that photo, but here I am with Paradise Pier in the background. Paradise Pier was my favorite themed area – it’s a big carnival midway section of the park that wraps around a big lagoon. Screamin’, the roller coaster, wraps above and around a lot of it, and there are smaller carnival style rides. The ferris wheel, called Mickey’s Fun Wheel, is 160 feet tall and has both stationary gondolas, like a regular ferris wheel, and swinging ones, that add a thrill element. We waited in the longer line for a swinging one, and I snapped this photo of myself while we waited:

Here’s Heidi, Tom, and I on Mickey’s Fun Wheel:

My favorite amusement park rides are roller coasters, and Screamin’ is a good one – it’s fast, has great dives and air time, and it’s long. Paradise Pier is also home to what turned out to be one of my favorite rides: Toy Story Midway Mania. It’s a fantastic mash-up of ride and carnival game. You wear 3-D glasses, and sit in cars equipped with toy guns that whip you through fun carnival-themed environments. The cars stop in front of 5 or 6 giant screens, and you compete against the other people in your cars in virtual carnival games populated with Toy Story characters: there’s a ring toss, and games where you break plates with baseballs, pop balloons with darts, and shoot at moving targets. The ride keeps track of your points, and at the end of the ride, you can see who won! I rode with Tom…

…and I won (I was Player 2)!

Heidi, who was one car over, handily beat me by an additional 30,000 points or so. Well played, Heidi!

While Toy Story Midway Mania was a blast, my favorite ride at DCA was Soarin’ Over California, where you sit in chairs that allow your feet to dangle. When the ride starts, the chairs get repositioned in front of a giant concave IMAX screen. There’s beautiful footage of scenery and landmarks from around California, and it comes together to make it seem like you’re hang gliding over all of it. The ride isn’t scary – it’s simply beautiful, and wonderfully done.

I don’t have too many more pictures to share – I didn’t take many to begin with, and then my battery died halfway through the day (whoops). But I did photograph my lunch, because even though I was at a theme park, that didn’t mean I was going to make poor food choices. We ate at Paradise Garden Grill, which serves Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food – cuisines I’ve never seen in a theme park before!

That’s a beef kofta skewer. Kofta is basically a Middle Eastern spiced meatball. There’s cucumber salad, rice pilaf, and a piece of pita on the side. They offer 4 sauces, but I couldn’t pick just one, so I got all four to try. The white one was tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber sauce), the green one was chimichurri (an Argentinean herb and oil-based sauce), and I forget what the other ones were, but I think one was a Moroccan-spiced chili sauce.

Later that night, we got a quick bite at Downtown Disney, a shopping and entertainment area next to the park. I got two chicken tacos at a taco stand, with lettuce, onions, cilantro, and salsa (no cheese or sour cream). I’m kinda happy to report that I wasn’t even tempted by any of the unhealthy theme park options, although I did love this vending machine, which we saw while waiting in line for the Monsters Inc. ride:

The “Sugar Salt & Fat” snack is my favorite! (It’s probably pretty delicious, too.)

Apart from the rides, we saw a couple really cool shows. DCA has a Broadway-style musical production of Aladdin that was well done, and, after the sun sets, the lagoon becomes home to World of Color, a very impressive, bright event that involves dancing fountains (like the Bellagio in Las Vegas) that shoot up walls of water that images and film clips are projected onto.

I’m excited to go back to DCA at some point i the future – two big parts of the park were under construction (opening in June): a Cars Land (themed around the Pixar Cars movies), and Buena Vista Street, a tribute to Los Angeles in the 1920s, when Walt Disney first arrived in California.

The best part about theme parks: I was walking all day long. Mile after mile after mile. Normally I’m very diligent about keeping track of my exercise, but every once in a while, it’s fun to have a very physical day (I was exhausted by the time I came home – we were there for around 11 hours!) and not worry about minutes or resistance levels or calories burned.

Keep it up, David!

They say Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, but what they don’t tell you is that this is  completely and totally true. I went to both D-Land and California Adventure this past weekend, and my day there was pretty close to perfect.

I went with a sizable group from UCLA – there were about 30 of us – and we got to the park at around 10:30 in the morning. We started off right, running around both parks to pick up fast passes for the rides we knew we wanted to do together (Indiana Jones, Star Tours, ~World of Color~, etc).

We went on our first ride, California Screaming, and it was a fabulous intro to the super fun times we were bound to be having the rest of the day. After that, we did a quick Tower of Terror run to make sure we were good and awake.

We decided we had had enough of CA and rushed over to DL, getting the hand stamps that glow under blacklight and screaming excitedly as we raced down Main Street.  The group wanted to go on the Jungle Cruise, and I was like… are you kidding me? So me and four other smart people went on Indian Jones instead (the line took fifteen minutes!) and after we met back up with the group for Mexican food near Thunder Mountain.

We made our way through Disneyland, hitting up the Haunted Mansion, the Thunder Mountain Railroad, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Space Mountain. Even though the lines weren’t terribly long (except for Space Mountain, but you knew that), we came up with clever ways to pass the time. We played word games, we played mind games, we ate brownies, and in every line we sang happy birthday to Evan because it was Evan’s birthday.

The last ride we went on before heading back to California Adventure was Small World. Let me just say that the group of 30ish had (miraculously) stayed together for the entire day, but when the time came to go on Small World there was a schism, and half the group decided to abandon the Small Worlders. I know now that they were the smart ones. If you have never been on this ride (as I hadn’t before last Sunday), just know that it is the most… disappointing ride in Disneyland. Some people really love it, but it looked like it had been made by a middle school leadership teacher with supplies from the middle school leadership closet. You could see the ceiling tiles (you could SEE the CEILING TILES!). So, sorry if I am bashing on a ride you like, but I just can’t not bash on it.

After the bizarre experience of having infant-like mannequins sing at me for ten minutes, I was really ready to get on over to CA. We used our Tower fast passes and then scurried over to watch World of Color.

Small World may be one of the more not-so-well-done things at Disneyland, but World of Color made up for it and then some. I can’t remember a time when I had that many full-body chills in such quick succession. It was beautiful, it was fun, it was heart-wrenching. It was everything you could want in a show. And it was just lights and water. I cannot properly explain, so I am just not going to.

After that, we went around both parks using up our fast passes, and at the end of the day we went to City Hall to become honorary citizens of Disneyland. The day was a 10 out of 10 and how cool that I got to share it with a bunch of UCLA people who felt the same way.

In the last two years several new attractions have opened. World of Color at Paradise Pier, Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, ElecTRONica and Goofy’s Sky School.

The attractions that have recently opened seem to belong to the park. World of Color is the night time attraction is no one should miss. You can get fast pass to the nightly show next to Grizzly River Run. The color on the fast pass lets you know which section you can view the show from.

ElecTRONica opened when the movie Tron Legacy was released and will be open for only a little while longer. The attraction transforms the Hollywood Pictures Backlot into a rave scene with DJ’s, dancers, with an arcade and specialty drinks served from the bar.

Ariel’s Undersea Adventure is a short ride similar to Snow White’s Scary Adventure and Peter Pan’s Flight take riders on a journey similar to the movie. This ride’s line is fast moving it goes by quickly IF there is a wait.

As this year comes to a close, I look back and remember 2011…

-My Amazing Road Trip with Kris, Andrew, and Jessica (Even though Andrew and I had a meltdown in Utah and the rest of the way home no one said a word.)

-Saying Goodbye to the first place Kris and I lived in together. Very sad, and has brought many arguments but so far we’ve made it through.

-Glee Live! World Tour

-Reconnecting with my best friend from back in the day, Teresa.

-Finally getting an iPhone!!!! My favorite thing I own, hands down!

-My Day of Fun (Courtesy of my bestie with a chestie, Jessica)

-Finally reading The Hunger Games

-First time experiencing the craziness of COMIC CON. (Crowded, loud, nerdy, Seeing the boys of Supernatural, Being to shy to walk up to Nicholas Brendon, listening to Anthony Stewart Head moderate the Grimm panel, meeting Pikachu, and the GLEE PANEL!!!!)

-World of Color, The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventures, The New Star Tours in 3D.

-Glee: The 3D Concert movie (VIP with Renee!)

-Meeting Jack Riggs for the first time.

-Jumping in a bounce house at my Niece’s birthday party

-My 11th Anniversary with Kris
-Meeting my new Homie, Dillon!

-My very first SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY! Thanks to my wonderful boobers, KRIS! (I’m 30 now!)

-When two Besties collide! (at my Surprise Party)

-The end of Harry Potter.

-The year where most of my favorite artists released new Cds… Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Simple Plan, Avril Lavigne. (You missed out Miley!)

-Pop culture debates with Aja.

-New TV… Revenge, New Girl, The Secret Circle, 2 Broke Girls, Terra Nova, Once Upon A Time.

-The cancellation of brothers and Sisters. (I actually went through the 7 stages of grief with this.)

-The start of my blog

“We hope that this New Year fills your life with love, your heart with hope, and our world with peace.” -Relient K

What are some of the nifty new things in my life, you ask? I’ve had a lot of thoughts that deserve their own posts recently (expect them soon! I’ll have more time to write while I’m on winter break), but there are two that are relevant to games and worth mentioning here.

The first is the Blizzard Holiday party. I was invited by one of my friends from this summer, and it was pretty incredible. The first half of the night was dinner at the Disneyland Hotel, and the second part of the night? They opened up half of California Adventure Park just for Blizzard. We didn’t have access to everything, but they did have the Tower of Terror operating, both of their karaoke venues open, and two showings of the ElecTRONica laser show (oh, and an open bar!).

The best part, however, was the private viewing of their World of Color show. This is because afterwards, they had a 5-minute Blizzard IP-themed show. No joke. It was one of the most epic things I’ve experienced in my entire life. The video doesn’t do it justice, but it’s still definitely worth checking out:

Amazing, right? I don’t think I dorked out this much since I found out I would get to be working there.

The other item (which doesn’t really hold a candle to that one but is still worth mentioning) is that the IGDA is starting a Student Perspective column in their monthly newsletter, and my submission was chosen to be the inaugural piece. It’s a little higher level compared to how I usually prefer to write – meaning it’s more theoretical and potentially ‘Ivory Tower-esque’, not more advanced – but it’s got a decent point behind it that I think I communicated well.

And it’s kind of exciting. The IGDA site gets a collective 6k+ unique monthly viewers, and while I don’t know how many of them go for the newsletters, it’s still a neat feeling. I’ll post it here when it’s actually published if anyone cares to check it out.

I stole some pictures from the album Erin posted on Facebook. Here are four of them.

At first, I thought it was charming...

...but seriously, I don't think I'm a "character" person.

Love this picture! and Tower of Terror!

Waiting for World of Color to start

There are more pictures on my camera (which I have to find) and on my phone (which I have to plug in). First world problems!

Also, this is my favorite tweet I’ve ever tweeted:

Unfortunately around 1.50am Kirsten woke up.  Mummy I feel sick. Made it to the bathroom just in time to avoid a mess but Kirsten needed a good clean up.  Here were the results of today’s activities a 15 minute shower and hair wash at 2am.  Not my idea of fun.  Then I needed to rinse out her clothes and find her spare set of pajamas.  Wasn’t happening I was not rifling through a suitcase.  However, I did have a spare t-shirt.  Guess what you’re wearing now.  Mummy I don’t want to sleep on my own.  I climbed into bed with Kirsten and she was out like a light, as was I, and we both slept until 7am.  Kirsten woke and was hungry and Daddy continued to sleep.  I took Kirsten down to the Beach Comber Breeze and helped ourselves to the buffet.  I restricted Kirsten’s intake as much as I could but there was absolutely no signs that anything had been wrong during the night.

10.30am we checked out, making sure we got some photos of Kirsten and Daddy with Pluto in the Lobby and made our way to the port.  I had had to ask the concierge as the Sat Nav in my car didn’t have the address.  All I had managed to get off the internet was World Cruise Center, but Sat Nav wasn’t having that.  It was in our paperwork to check in between 11.30-12.00 and we were there soon after 11.00.  Of course we didn’t have the sense to drop off one of us and our bags before parking so we had to make our way across the parking lot with everything in tow and dropped it off before entering the terminal.  Thank goodness!  We checked in, received our Keys to the World for the cruise, and were given Group 8 for boarding.  What to do?  Well there was a line for checking in Kirsten for the on board Youth Activities and having her Mickey Band attached (this meant that she could not be lost, theoretically during the week) and then we spotted Mickey and Minnie on a photo op.  By the time we had finished both of these lines it was our turn to board and another photo op as we went on.

What a welcome as we went into the Lobby.  We noticed that everyone else was this family, and that family, but they turned to Kirsten asked her name and said “Welcome to Kirsten and family…” Typical she always get the looks.  With all this going on I was making sure I knew where Jennifer and family were.  Don’t know if you remember Jennifer, but I think I mentioned her in a previous post.  We had “met” on Disboards and Jennifer and her family were participating in the Fish Extender.  They were from MI and had already been on vacation for 2 weeks before the cruise which had included a stop in Scottsdale to visit their family enabling us to meet briefly.  Jennifer has 4 children, 3 sons and a daughter.  Her daughter is 20 months older than Kirsten and they fast became inseparable.  I felt the same with Jennifer but had to remember I was an adult.  She didn’t need me as a shadow!

I’ve realised how long this post is getting and am going to cut it short.  I will continue with Day 1 tomorrow (or in the next few days when I do another post). Apologies for all the thumbnail pictures too, but I didn’t want any of you to miss out on anything.

On June 11, 2010, Disney’s newest nighttime spectacular opened to the public in Paradise Bay at Disney California Adventure.  Incorporating over 1,200 fountains, numerous flame jets, lasers, and 34 HD projectors, this show is sure to impress.  Each fountain is capable of creating over 4,000 individual colors, and some can launch water 200 feet into the night sky.  This show creates the worlds largest water-projection screen at 400 feet wide and 100 feet tall.  Budget was nothing small, amounting to over $75 million to produce and construct.  The “stage” is submerged in the bay when not in use, and three platforms are lifted to show level right before the nightly performances.  To see the scope of the football field sized spectacle from above, check out an awesome video here.

Did we do it? Yes!

Was it amazing? Yes!

Do we want to do it again? Yes!

Did we enjoy every minute of the three weeks we had together? Yes!

I decided it’s time to start blogging about it.  So here we go, out first week at Disneyland. (It seemed like a good place to start.)  We were staying at Disney’s Grand Californian Resort & Spa. It was our first time staying there and even our first time just walking into the building.  It was beautiful and we enjoyed our stay.  We enjoyed the convenience of getting to the parks and the feel of the hotel.  However, we also still love the Disneyland Hotel.  We haven’t been able to come up with a favorite, so we will probably alternate each trip or see which is a better deal!

lobby area

We loved every minute of our week there.  We were running the Disneyland Half Marathon to complete our Coast to Coast challenge, but other than that, we were just there to have a week of fun.  My husband and I haven’t been there since our honeymoon over two years ago, so it was a lot of fun!

enjoying ice cream on our honeymoon at Disneyland

We loved every minute of it.  We made sure we road our favorites multiple time.  It’s just amazing to see all the rides there. We love Pirates of the Caribbean more than Walt Disney World’s, as it’s longer and seems to have more detail.  We love getting to ride Mr. Toad, Alice, Pinocchio, Indiana Jones, Monsters Inc, and all the other rides we don’t have at Walt Disney World.  We also love just the intimate feel of Disneyland as you can really tell that Walt Disney was there.  You could tell how much he loved the place.

Mr. Toad!

We had the pleasure of dinning at Club 33 during this trip again and loved every minute of our lunch experience!  We had great company and great food!

Mary Poppins table at Club 33

We were lucky enough to share our Club 33 experience with our friends from California and one of our best friends from Florida.  The six of us had an amazing time.  It was my husband’s and mine’s second time to the club (We had eaten there once on our honeymoon for dinner), but our first time for lunch.  For everyone else. it was their first time, and we can tell they enjoyed every minute of it.   It was great to watch them enjoy the club like we had in the years before.  We all visited the “gift shop” at the end and got a few souvenirs to remember our experience by.

World of Color

It was also our first time getting to see World of Color.  And can I say, WOW!   It was an amazing experience.  We decided to do the World of Color Picnic to get fastpasses.  It was definitely worth the experience.  The food was decent, the price was worth it, and we had an amazing view for World of Color.  It wasn’t very busy when we were there, so we may have been okay without it, but we were glad we went through the experience of it.

best of friends

Overall, it was an amazing trip.  We got to ride the Matterhorn multiple times which always put a smile on my husband’s face.  We got some new experiences (Ariel’s Undersea Adventure) with some friends we have never been to Disneyland with, and got to spend some time with some friends we haven’t seen in awhile.

Dumbo

Aladdin Musical

Riding in the Tail of the Monorail

Just a few pictures from our trip.  I ended up taking over 700 pictures throughout our adventure. They are all on my facebook, but obviously not all uploaded here.

It was definitely a great way to get relaxed as this was my husband’s and mine’s first vacation in well over a year.  It was worth every penny of it.

Hoping to have a GREAT Friday…..