Los Angeles - Universal Studios

Friday was Declan's actual birthday so we started off the day with opening presents in pajamas.  Since we were travelling I only brought the presents he was receiving from us, and left the ones from extended family at home.  I took video as he opened the gifts and post it here because it perfectly represents his developmental stage where he is so sweetly appreciative of the small inexpensive gifts we were giving him, yet at the same time, was quite disappointed when the well ran dry.  Takes after his mama!  All of his presents from us had a "National Park" theme to them, as we have really been enjoying visiting the US national parks in the past couple of years, and Declan is crazy about the awesome Junior Ranger program.  He has become a Junior Ranger at 8 different parks so far, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously.  Said responsibilities mostly manifest in picking up other people's litter while visiting the parks, but hey.   Ecological awareness must start somewhere!

Lest you think all is too sweet and wholesome with our family, after present opening,  Shane and I left Declan at the hotel with a babysitter while we went and did a callback audition with The Chase game show.   Now we have left him with hotel babysitters many times, but this one really pushed the envelope.  Her name was Mary, and she was 85 if she was a day and was so frail that she became quite winded walking from the elevator to our room (about 30 feet).   I wasn't worried about Declan but the whole time we were at the audition I kept envisioning the ways in which Mary might shuffle off this mortal coil in our absence.  When we returned, she was surprisingly as alive as when we left, but Shane had to help her out of the chair as she could not get to her feet on her own.   So that was a new low for us in outsourcing childcare.  Happy Birthday, Honey!

The rest of the day we walked over to Universal Studios next door, and had a grand time.  It was actually a lot more fun than I was expecting for some reason.  Highlights for Declan were the pet show, the Jurassic Park water ride that we went on 4x, and the Studio tour, which was as delightfully cheesy as ever.

Los Angeles - California Adventure

Our second day of the LA trip we had planned to go to California Adventure.  Because we were only staying in Anaheim one night before moving to our free Jeopardy hotel, we opted to stay at the Disney property in the Grand Californian Hotel.  The hotel itself was kind of meh- a three star hotel at five star prices, but it gives an important perk of being allowed access to the theme parks one hour before they are open.  The bad news meant we had to be up to line up at the gate at 6.30 am, but in that first hour of limited admission, we were able to get in a whole day's worth of rides.  The most popular ride there right now is Radiator Springs Racers, a Cars themed roller coaster, and during the day the lineups were between 90 and 120 minutes long, but we were able to ride it 3 times before the park opened.  As painful as it was to get that early start, it was well worth it in terms of being able to cram as many rides in as possible.

California Adventure- as the first ones in.

Moments later, the theme park crush resumes.

Declan was never really a huge Cars fan, but he sure enjoyed Radiator Springs, the Disney version.  They've done a really good job with it and it feels like an old dusty town. 

It was fun to see the life-size versions of the Cars characters driving around.  Mater even stopped by to wish Declan a happy birthday, which blew his mind.

Luigi's Tires Selfie

We packed it in and headed off to the airport to pick up Shane, and move into our Jeopardy Hotel which was the Hilton Universal Studios. Weird aside about the Hilton Universal Studios, it is a 3 star hotel with 5 star room service.  I've had worse room service in all kinds of luxury hotels than they are inexplicably dishing up the Universal Hilton.  On the down side, or the not-down side I should say, hotel elevators would not pick up at our floor- the 8th.  We would have to walk up one floor to catch an elevator.  But hey, it was free.

We had a little tiny Easter Egg hunt in our room, as it was Easter Monday.  It is really easy to hide tiny eggs very, very well, and it took a good hour of "warmer colder" hints before he found all the eggs again. The real challenge was for me to remember where I had hid them.   I think there is one still in that hotel room.

PA Pioneer Days

For Pioneer Day at Pulaski Academy the kids are invited to dress up old timey style.  I have no idea what went on at Pioneer Day as it was at school and parents weren't invited.   But how cute is this picture on his way in to school?

Los Angeles- Disneyland

After his heartbreaking bad luck in the first round of the Jeopardy Decades tournament, Shane was pickedv to be the alternate for the next round of the tournament. Should any of the lovely friends and competitors who had made it through to the next round be unable to play, Shane would be on hand to take their place. The chances of this happening were very slim, and since the show's producers had 

specially invited Declan to attend, we decided to make a family trip out of it, and celebrate Declan's sixth birthday on the road.  Great idea, but I accidentally booked Declan and I on flights a day too early, before we had our Jeopardy-sponsored hotel room and a day before Shane was to arrive.  We decided that this would be a good time for Declan and I to go to Disneyland, as we could stay out in Anaheim for the night and save the price of admission 

for Shane's ticket.  At $100/day per adult, that's not nothing.  We flew out to LA at 6 am and went straight from the airport to Disneyland.  

Since it was his birthday week, the staff gave Declan a birthday button, which meant that every Disney employee, er. cast member was contractually obligated to stop whatever work they were doing to wish Declan a happy birthday as we walked by.   First on our agenda was to hit Space Mountain. At our first Disneyworld trip in the fall of 2012, Declan wasn't tall enough to go on Space Mountain.  We had been milking this as a reason to eat veg for the last year and a half, and finally now he was tall enough to make the cut.  

Before Space Mountain - so excited!

During Space Mountain- so terrified! 

After Space Mountain- just glad to be alive.

He hated it. That's the first roller coaster he hasn't wanted to do over.   All those vegetables for nothing.  Star Tours was a big hit though, and in keeping with his newly discovered love of Star Wars, a big portion of the day at Disney was spent at the Jedi Training Academy.   This is a live action audience participation show that young would-be padewans can participate in. The hard part is getting chosen from the audience to join the Academy. We had read up a little online on how to get picked, and had donned some Star Wars gear in hopes of being chosen.  This part was stressful!  It was heartbreaking to see kids get passed over by the Jedi Master.  Declan was one of the last chosen, and it was a relief.  He was issued a Jedi Robe and a light saber, and received some instruction in hand-to-hand combat.  

Padewan learner.

After learning some light saber basics, Declan got to go up on stage and confront Darth Vader mano a mano. 

He also opte to go back and battle Darth Maul.  I thought this very brave, as Darth Maul looked scary as all get out, and they generally only had the big kids go up against him.

The Jedi Training was definitely Declan's highlight of the day.  His favourite ride was the Matterhorn.  We ended up packing it in a bit early as our day had started with a 2 AM PST trip to the airport, so we were both ready to turn in at dinner time.  But we enjoyed every minute while we were there.

Toad Suck Pet Show

We kicked off summer with a visit to the annual Toad Suck festival.  Loyal readers will recollect that this is  the very first festival Declan ever attended. His life has basically been one festival after another ever since.   For the first time, Declan entered the Toad Suck Pet Show competition, with his bff Phoebe, who was suitably attired as a hamburger.  It was a tough competition- all the boys and girls who had entered were quite a bit older, and had dogs that did actual tricks.  Phoebe will only listen to Declan if he is holding a treat, otherwise she files him under disregard.  I had forgotten to bring some training treats, but got a granola bar out of my purse and broke it into pieces so Declan could use that to bribe Phoebe with compliance.



 The Emcee asked Declan what kind of dog Phoebe was, and he replied "Spaniel crossed with Burger".   Declan is coming into his own comedy-wise, and he had the audience laughing pretty heartily.  He ran through Phoebe's trick repetoire pretty quickly, ("Sit" and "Lie Down"), the Emcee asked if Declan could do some tricks to help catch Phoebe up to the other dogs in the show.  Declan said he could sit as well, promptly sank to the grass, then popped up again and tossed one of the "training treats" from his pocket into his mouth.  Not realizing, the treats were actually chunks of granola bar, the audience was aghast, but the judges were won over by Declan's commitment to his role.

 We had a real Toddlers & Tiaras moment when the judges announced the winners from the "Large Dog" category and Phoebe was not among them; Declan was completely downtrodden not realizing he had pulled for a higher title.   When Declan and Phoebe were called up as winners of BEST IN SHOW and awarded a ginormous trophy, Declan could not stop making this face for quite some time.  This is his surprised face.

 Still his surprised face.

What a team!

Celebratory Jig.  Trophy now has pride of place on Declan's night stand.

Vocabulary

Declan's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds.  On this day, he used the word "parkour", which I wouldn't have thought he would know, so I asked him what he thought it meant, and this was his demonstration.  Makes me laugh, everytime.

 Declan had his first solo trail ride today, on a very gentle senior horse named Brownie. It was an all-terrain adventure, ridgin through woods, meadows and fording 4 different streams, up and down some pretty extreme embankments. When we got home Shane asked him how the trip was, Declan said "It was a very long journey."  It was nice to be out in the beautiful weather after what seemed like a particularly long and nasty winter this year.

Afterwards we went to the gym to learn how to snorkel in anticipation of our Spring Break Caribbean vacation that is around the corner.    Declan took to it right away and really enjoyed practicing.  He has never been too keen on getting into the open ocean though, so we will see how he fares now that he is a little older.

Detailed Twitter Signup Instructions

Here are detailed instructions on how to sign up for Twitter for those of you unfamiliar with Twitter but wanting to help vote for Shane to get back on Jeopardy.  It may look complicated but the whole process should only take you about a minute.

1.        Go to twitter.com and fill in the fields under the heading “New to Twitter”.  You can enter any name you would like, real or otherwise.  Enter a valid email address and a password and then choose “Sign Up for Twitter”.

2.       Under the heading “Join Twitter Today” you will see your email and password as you entered them on the previous page, and be asked to confirm a unique username.  It has to be different from all the other twitter users.  Once you have picked a unique name, green text in the margin will confirm that the username is available and you can click on “Create My Account”.

3.       Twitter will show you an example tweet.  Click on “Next”.

4.       Twitter will ask you to “Build Your Timeline” by selecting at least 5 people to follow.  You can select follow from any of Twitter’s suggestions or you can use the search box to find people/groups you are interested in.  When you choose to follow someone that means you will be able to read their tweets in your twitter feed.  You can follow as many people as you like. Some people in turn, will follow you. Once you pick at least 5 people to follow, you can click on next.

5.       Twitter then asks you to “See Who is Here” which means pick 5 more people/groups to follow. You can search for anything or anybody in the search box, it can be news channels, television shows, bloggers, athletes, basically anyone you can think of.  Once you pick 5 more to follow, you can click “Next”.

6.       Twitter then invites you to “Add People You Know”.  You can click on whichever email program you use, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL or Yahoo!  This will bring up the Twitter accounts of anyone in your Contacts list.  If you don’t want to add your contacts, you can scroll down and click on the word “Skip” at the bottom of the left-hand box.

7.       Twitter then invites you to “Add  Character” by adding a photo of yourself and writing a short bio that will appear on your profile page.  If you don’t wish to do this, click “Skip” at the bottom.

8.       You have made it to your Twitter page now!  In the upper right hand corner you will see a square with a quill in it.  

 

        Click on this button and a dialogue box will open up under the heading “What’s Happening” to allow you to compose a tweet.

9.       To vote for Shane type “Shane #JeopardyVote” and then click the “Tweet” button.  Because you used the hashtag (#) before the phrase “jeopardyvote” Jeopardy producers will be able to see your vote.

10.   Thanks for helping!  Retweet every day!

Best Buddies.

Declan started Kindergarten today, at Forest Park, the fourth school he's gone to so far!  He is a little nervous about starting at a brand new school, which I found somewhat surprising. 




Trying to check out his new backpack.

 

 

 

 

Giving Mrs. Johnson an apple on the first day. 

 

At his seat, facing the corner of the room like a perpetual time out.