Meteors, Disneyland, Christmas Parties, Birthdays (Whew, Part 3!)

My goodness- the craziness continues around here- but it's all good!

We had kind of a cool, "space" event here two weeks ago.  We were minding our own business, eating our dinner, nice and family like when we hear an enormous BOOM that shook the house, rattled the windows and scared the dog.  It felt like something huge hit our house and scared us just a teensy bit.  Dad spent the next 20 minutes scouting around the house, the roof etc. to make sure our house wasn't going to fall down.  He found not a thing.  We found out the next morning that a meteor entered the atmosphere over northwest Tucson, about 30 miles from here, broke into pieces and crashed to earth.  Kind of cool, huh?

We recovered from that in time to make a quick, blitz weekend to Disneyland!  Oh my gosh!  We always have such a great time when we go and this was no exception.  This was the first time we have ever stayed at a Disney hotel in the park so that was kind of fun.

We stayed at Paradise Pier and they had this cool, beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby.  Disney is so awesome for Christmas.

We got quick checked into our hotel on Friday night and headed straight over to California Adventure for dinner and a quick ride on Soarin' Over California before heading back for bed.  We had a big day planned as the park opened at 7AM for us.  Dad set the alarm for 6 but he really didn't need to as I had everyone up at 5:30.  It was the start of a 14 hour day at Disney.  (We wanted to make sure we got our money's worth.)

 Here we are at sunrise in front of the castle.

As usual, we tore it up.  We started in Carsland because that is always crazy busy so you need to get there early.  After a relatively short 40 minute wait, we hopped into our waiting car.  Half way through the ride, it broke down so we sat for about 20 minutes, taking in everything and bonding as a family.

We finally got going again and because we got stuck, we got to ride again!  Without even getting out of our car!  You NEVER could ride Cars twice without a two hour wait so when they told us just to stay seated if we wanted to go again, you better believe our butts were firmly planted with seat belts fastened.  We watched a family in front of us actually get out and couldn't imagine what they were thinking.  Maybe someone had to pee- that would be the only explanation.

We took a short break for some Mickey ice cream and then managed to get in the Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain (x2!) in addition to some smaller rides.

We were up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to get to the airport and we all slept on the plane and everyone was in bed by 7:30 Sunday night.  An exhausting but super fun weekend- we rode Cars twice!!
This past week was pretty quiet.  It was my last week of school, dad's last week of work so it really starting to feel like Christmas now.

We had a nice little storm move through on Friday.  These winter storm always make mom's morning runs really, really pretty.

Saturday night, we had our friends over for a Christmas party.  The adults all sounded like they were 80 talking about their heartburn and comparing remedies, talking about Neti pots, back and neck pain, plantar fascitis.  God lord. BORING. I don't want to grow up!  Us kids kept it lively by running non-stop for the entire evening.
We finally collapsed into bed and slept hard.  We woke up on Sunday to celebrate Richmas!  I was a little crabby in the morning due to overwhelming fatigue but after a forced nap, I rallied and I think dad ended up having a pretty good birthday.  It involved a huge chocolate cake at 2 in the afternoon so how bad could it be??  Either way, we wish dad a fabulous day!

 Hope everyone has a merry Christmas and we'll see you in a week!