Disney Animation Academy

One of the reasons we opted to do 5 days at the Disney parks this trip was because last time, three days was BARELY enough time just to ride all the rides, and so then forget about all the parades and shows, and little "stuff to see" along the sidelines. We really wanted to fit in all the "extras", while still having time to get our fill of rides. We still managed to keep VERY BUSY, and I would probably never do five days again (OH, MY ACHING FEET!!!), but in doing so this time, we had time to attend a course from the Disney Animation Academy in Disney California Adventure, among many other fun things! The kids all REALLY wanted to take the "learn to draw Goofy" class, but the class available at the time we were in the area was Phineas and Ferb (which they all ended up liking just fine!).

You sit down in a "classroom" with a large piece of paper on a clipboard, and a pencil with no eraser. The idea is that it's a sketching class, and you don't need to erase anything. You make a series of light lines in the general shape of what you're drawing, and then darken what you plan to keep. We weren't told how big or small to make our sketches, so all 8 of us ended up with different sized drawings in various positions across our papers.

Connor's is my absolute favorite, purely because he couldn't draw a light line if his life depended on it (one of his classroom goals by the end of the school year is not pressing so hard with his pencil when he writes!!). Despite the fact that his sketch lines and his "keep" lines are all super dark, you can still totally tell it's Phineas and Ferb.


Jared has been drawing Phineas and Ferb over all sorts of paper scraps around the house since taking this class. Here's his drawing from our trip


Emily's


Dan had to be the funny guy giving the character on the left Cookie Monster eyes (I've never seen the show so I don't know which character is which! ha!)


And I ended up drawing the one on the right with a really fat neck. haha!


I consider myself as having ZERO drawing talent (I joke that even my stick figures look bad), so imagine my surprise when I turned out a fairly decent drawing of Phineas and Ferb! I think all 8 of us had a good enough time attending the class (which maybe took 20 minutes??), and at least the four adults were just happy for the chance to SIT DOWN!

I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the four kids with their drawings, but we pretty much rolled the drawings up, stuffed them into backpacks, and headed out the door to do more exploring...

Enjoying the rides

In no particular order, here are some of the rides we enjoyed during our stay:

Here are my kids, 20-ish minutes into the line for Space Mountain (before we had a clear understanding of the whole Fast Pass deal...), and about 10 minutes before they announced the ride was closed for an undetermined amount of time, at which point we left and came back later with Fast Passes (given to us for being stranded on a different ride!). I love how the Goofy teeth on Connor's hat make him look like he has creepy blank white eyes...


Em and J on Astro Blasters. This ended up being Thomas's favorite ride from what I could tell. I stunk at shooting the targets (couldn't tell which of the many red laser dots all over the wall were mine in order to know how to adjust my "gun" to aim better)


A little rain mid-day one of the days didn't slow us down too much (maybe sped us up since this was the least crowded day of our entire visit! ha!). We were damp and a little chilled, but nothing horrible...




I rocked the Toy Story Midway Mania ride. I had "High Score in your vehicle" (your actual little car shows the score of you and your ride partner--in this picture Jared was my partner, but your "vehicle" has a total of 8 people, and I beat them all! *grin*). The second time we rode, I had High Score again, but I can't find the picture.


The three little boys were awesome on this ride. You lean in the direction you want your hover tire-thingy to go in order to bump into other people, and they were light enough they flew all over the place! Dan and Em and I hardly went anywhere. Not sure how Tiff and Aaron felt they did.


Cars Racers ride was a little more intense than I expected! Hair flying all over the place as we were whipping aorund corners and over hills. wow! We rode twice, but I missed out on photographing the monitor of one of the cars from our 2nd ride.






Thank goodness for Smart Phones making standing in line a little more entertaining! I'll admit to my fair share of this: (thankfully, we'd figured out Fast Passes at this point so lines on the major rides were 20 minutes tops! WOO HOO!)


Connor's absolute FAVORITE ride was the California Screamin' roller coaster in California Adventure. It goes from 0-60mph in a flash and sends you off on a wild ride, which includes an upside down loop! (in this picture, the loop goes around the sun design which is the smaller circle lit up on the left side). He rode it NINE TIMES (with Dan as his somewhat willing partner in crime. Em and J rode it 4-5 times)




At one point, the line was ridiculously short so Connor was trying to bypass having to wind around through the empty pathways (lined with metal "fenches") by jumping over them and whacked his shins:


Just before Star Tours started. HOLY HECK, this ride was a lot more intense than I was expecting! I wasn't entirely convinced my seatbelt was going to hold me! ha! I'm thankful I had my motion sickness patch, but I'll admit it still got a little iffy... BEWARE if you are prone to motion sickness!!!! As an added sidenote: We did this ride twice and the screen was different each time. It's rumored that there are 54 different simulations for this ride; I guess they want you to keep coming back!


Only a small percentage of the pictures from our trip include any of the adults, and this was actually a pretty decent one, so I thought I'd share it (we were waiting for the Jungle Tours ride, or whatever it's called)


Stranded and bored on the Sailing Ship Columbia (aka Pirate Ship). For our inconvenience, we were given Fast Passes to be used on any ride at any time that day, which is pretty much how we discovered how awesome Fast Passes were, so all was not lost!

Jedi Jared

Waiting for the Star Wars Jedi training show to begin


Jared was chosen from the audience to take part in the Jedi training! (He's towards the left in the Donald Duck hat)




Once the kids were trained as Jedi's, Darth Vadar and two Storm Troopers showed up (photo credit to my cousin's husband, Aaron)


Hot on their heels was Darth Maul (photo credit to Aaron)


Some kids got to fight Darth Vadar, and some kids got the fight Darth Maul. Jared was in the group that fought Darth Maul


After defeating the enemy, the kids were lined up to recite a Jedi pledge, then received certificates of completion of Jedi training


Jared had a really good time, and the guy running the show/training was really funny, so it made it a fun show for the adults, too!

Disneyland Character Sightings

We surprised the kids bright and early Sunday, Feb. 17th with a trip to Disneyland! We surprised them even further by meeting up with my cousin and her husband and son at the airport and spending the week with them while we were at Disneyland.

We only had a half a day Sunday, but didn't waste any time heading into the park. We were barely through the gate when we spotted Sleeping Beauty. My three kids were willing to pose, but Thomas wasn't having anything to do with posing with a princess!


We saw numerous other characters during our time at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure



(This isn't exactly a character, but it's a "must have" photo opp!)








(another photo opp)
















My cousin and her family hadn't made it into the park yet at this point, and Jared was off with Dan gathering up fast passes. Emily and Connor and I thought we were in line to meet Tinkerbell (a favorite of Emily's when she was little, so we stood in line for old time's sake), but it turned out to be Fawn






My cousin's family had already left the park for the day, but we ran into a family we know from the kids's school and Jared's swim team, so we had fun hanging out with them for a couple of hours


There's a couple other good ones my cousin's husband took, which I haven't had time to sort through yet...

I'll share more Disneyland pictures throughout the week, I'm sure! *grin*

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I never really did get around to sharing more pictures from our ocean trip this summer. I came across these three pictures and had a nice laugh! I'd forgotten all about the boys hamming it up. Serious goofballs, these two!

(now you see Connor)


(now you don't...very well anyway)


Antlers! (jazz hands?)


Those were accidentally taken on continuous shot, so you can imagine how quickly this whole thing went down. Hilarious! These boys can drive me bonkers on a pretty regular basis, but they sure can make me LAUGH!

PS I have zero explanation for the expression on Jared's face! I haven't seen that expression before or since. hahahaha!! He's got a little SASS, eh?

Some favorites

I took way too many ocean pictures to attempt to show them all, so I picked out a handfull of favorites to share instead:







(look close, you can see Connor scaring the birds)