Da Bu Dee Da Bu Di

Yo listen up. Here's a story.

About a little fam headed out to Dis-land.

Their third day lookin' tight when everything they wear is just blue.

Through the park. Inside and outside.

Blue Star Tours with a blue little cousin.

We will navigate

Until we find more blue like us.

On our bus. Throwin' the candy bag around.

And then we head to Space Mountain...

Where the rap must end because it's time for a real story not revolving around the lyrical framework of Eiffel 65.

My favorite ride at Disneyland is Space Mountain. Each day I made one ride goal for myself. On blue-shirt-day, my only goal of the whole day was to ride Space Mountain. As we made our way over to the ride, I was shocked to find Eli was well beyond the height requirement and could join me. With the help of some cousin-pressure, and a glaring lack of providing any preparatory information for Eli's first experience on a legitimate roller coaster, we queued ourselves.

Eli and I loaded up. Eli and I lovingly glanced at each other as our lap bars were secured. Eli and I clutched hands as the coaster did a mini jolt forward. And then I said, "It might be a little scary, but it's just fun and pretend."

Zoom. Jolt. Jolt.

Darkness.

Scary Goblin face.

Jolt. Jolt. Jolt. Jolt. Zoooooooooooommmmmmm.

Pitch black. Goblin face.

Never ending ride. Which is why I love it as an adult. And hate it when I'm visualizing Eli's undoubtedly glazed, over-stimulated expression of concern and discomfort with every blind swirl of the coaster.

The ride finally stopped. Eli slowly turned to me with just the haunted face I expected to see after experiencing the ride through his perspective. As soon as he was confident in our safe return to visibility and normal speeds, Eli looked at me betrayed and said, "Why did you choose that ride?!?"

And yes. Lincoln expelled excrements on my pants. My mom always cautioned me to keep a spare pair of pants in the diaper bag. Until this day, I assumed she meant for the baby. Now we know.

Nobody says, "Hey! Let's go see Aladdin!" Because they actually care to see the show. No, no. It's code for, "Hey! This California heat wave is turning me into a smear of Picasso art so let's go sit in an air conditioned building for an hour." We're there.

Toy Story Mania was a group favorite. We had a few nerds of our party practically outshooting the daily high scores. *cough* Jeff *cough*

My parents so kindly took our kids so Jeff and I could ride Tower of Terror. Lincoln was so excited he started doing the sprinkler.

Then we rode California Screamin' -- where I learned what Jeff would look like should he ever become zombie apocolized. It should be duly noted that Laurie appears to be the one most likely to survive the apocalypse with ease and finesse. I would laugh my way into zombie-dom and Jacob would over-analyze his way into self destruction.

"Oh! We're feeling so great!" We said.
"The kids are doing awesome. Let's stay late tonight!" We agreed.
"Let's just go grab some food at the cheapest restaurant in the park and have a nice Disney meal." We reasoned.

We walked into the restaurant area only to find. CHAINS. Chains. Chains. Chains. A square of chains just chained up for no apparent reason other than to urge my children to run over, under, around, through them over and over again. Chaos. Madness. Loudness. Clinging. Clanging. Staring. Staring. Glaring.

They were crazy. I was hungry. Jeff was hungry. And then we realized we had to carry our food on a tray.

So we have two boys running around, banging any metal-on-metal combination they can reach (which is more than one would expect in such an area), grabbing me and Jeff and pulling at our exhausted limbs just to dangle like monkeys, and one boy in my arms flailing around because he's excited to finally be out of the stroller. And we're supposed to carry four meals worth of trays.

This was my least happy moment at Disney.

I got immediately stressed and anxious over the task and my lack of control and my inability to know what to do to resolve the problem of needing extra hands and knowing where to go to get the food and where to go to sit and coming up with bribery fast enough to keep the monkeys at bay.

I had a shaky tray with two meals in one hand and Lincoln in the other when Eli ran by and tried to hang on my food carrying arm. I lost my cool, but I proudly did not lose the food.

We eventually wove through the obstacle course to the dining area where all I wanted was a nice, ice cold drink of water and their only water option was...a drinking fountain. Boo!

There was much grumbling to be had by me at dinner. But everyone else seemed to recover from the fiasco as soon as their bellies were full.

The few moments when we Disneyed on our own made me super grateful for the majority of the time when we had extra company and extra hands to help!