My head hurts, my feet are sore, and I want to sleep. NaBloPoMo, you kicked my butt. Or maybe it was the nine hours hiking around Disneyland in the driving wind. Either way, I am zonked.

Disneyland was freezing. Just. so. very. COLD. Where we live, it’s about 70 degrees all year long. We typically get a few weeks in the 80s over the summer, maybe even a few days in the 90s. In the winter, there’s usually a little cold patch where we get down into the 60s during the day. Sure, it gets chillier at night, but that’s irrelevant. When we pulled into the parking lot at ye old magic kingdom, our car thermometer registered 58 degrees. At ten thirty in the morning. With winds that ripped the kids’ hats right off their heads. Super.

So we pretty much froze all day. I’d dressed the baby in pants and a long sleeved shirt, then added an overall dress thingy “for extra warmth” (read: “because it was cute”). She got to wear all that, plus an extra pair of pants over the first pair, a sweatshirt with hood, and a pair of socks on her too-small-for-mittens hands. Sheesh. Too bad I didn’t think of bringing snow gear. Or even owning snow gear. We bought sweatshirts, hats, and gloves for the bigger kids, then left when we couldn’t get Owen to stop shivering.

Disneyland is always entertaining for Dane and I, since our kids aren’t familiar with most of the characters or storylines. Abigail wanted to meet the princesses (they have new princess digs, and if you wait in line for hours, you get to meet three of them), but she had to keep whispering to me, “Who’s this one? What’s her name?” Neither of the kids had heard of Jasmine before; they now think her name is “Jazz Man,” and that she’s an androgynous musician. Also, she asked Abigail how we traveled to Disneyland. “I told her we rode in our car,” Abigail related later. “She said she rode on a flying carpet. I told the truth.” So apparently she’s a lying musician.

We didn’t stick around for most of the princess storytelling shows, but we’ve done them in years past. They ask kids to shout out bits of trivia from the audience, stuff like “How many fairies does Sleeping Beauty meet?” and “What color was my dress at the ball?” My kids are the ones yelling, “Depends which version you’re reading!” and “What does it matter?” And let me tell you, my kids are not shy about shouting out. The actors always appreciate us.

There’s a promotion going on right now where some cast members have secret prizes to give away to random park visitors. Toward the end of the day, Dane mentioned that he was annoyed that we hadn’t yet won a million dollars.

Me: “Yeah, me too… Is that even one of the prizes?”
Him: “I don’t think so.”
Me: “Ah, well. That might explain it.”

We did end up winning a glittery tinkerbell pin right at the end of the day, though, so I guess that’s something.

And I managed to say: “You know what’s great about Disneyland? There’s never enough time to do everything in one trip. So we’ll have something to do next time!” I got it out about ten minutes before the kids realized we hadn’t been to the peter pan thing, or the storybook boat thing, or the… or the… And then I could say, “Right! Remember, that’s what’s great about Disneyland!” And that worked somehow.

Other things that worked, though I wasn’t expecting them to:
- The rule that lollipops live at Disneyland. Goodnight, lollipops! See you next year! And there were no tears.
- Me saying that we didn’t need to be sad when we left. Goodbye Disneyland! Again, no tears.
- Telling the kids to go to sleep in the car. Well, no, we expected that to work, though we always fear it won’t. And still, no tears! Almost makes you want to go to Disneyland more often, doesn’t it? Yeah, almost.