Day 4 - California Adventure & Disneyland Again!

She's ready for another day of Disney. You have to get the picture in the front of the park.

Are you ready for a Jungle Adventure?

Some people were too busy taking pictures to enjoy the ride. :)

This was Sadie's all time favorite ride.

Silly Monkeys.

She saw danger. . . it was written on a sign.

Baby elephants that take baths are pretty funny. She thought the back side of water looked pretty cool.

The canibals were debatable.

Hippos were interesting.

She did hide from the pirannas.

It almost looks real.

Mark and Marthe enjoyed the Tower of Terror. . . so did the Asian guy in the background. . . he was a bit worried at first.

Wall.E Was Fun.

Most of them were happy to be there most of the time.

The new Toy Story ride is my new favorite ride.

Once the boys put on the 3d glasses, they looked around and said, "wow Mark, you're in 3d" etc.

I realized shortly after Marthe took this picture that Tommy was actually standing up in the ride. . . You'll have to see the video sometime when I tell him to sit back down.

One of Spencer's occasional demonstrations of having to deal with it.

If you work for Disney, you get to fight kids with light sabers. . . and you get paid for it. It is great, because by the time fireworks come around, mom & dad are pretty tired.

Marthe did a great job with the new camera.

The fireworks were very cool.

This is one of Mickey Mouse:

Ooooh

Ahhhh

That was totally wicked!

Day 3 - Disneyland!

Here are pictures from day 1 at Disneyland.
When we first got there, we went to Space Mountain.
While we were gone, Buzz Lightyear tried to say hello to Sadie. . . this was about as close as he got before Sadie freaked out.
She liked the haunted mansion. . . Tommy cried and cried begging me not to take him on the haunted mansion. . . but after he went once he declared it as one of his favorite rides.

There are always cool things to use as backdrops for photos.

Sadie and Spencer had to do a lot of waiting while other people went on rides. . . but they didn't seem to mind much.

This ride revealed the children as they really are. . . martians from outer space.

They tried to lock us up. . . but we were too busy having fun.

I forgot to turn on my flash. . .but you can still see the face of Sadie. . .who wasn't too interested in Mickey. . unlike Spencer at the same age who was very excited.

We all enjoyed It's A Small World. . . they added some new Disney characters from some of the more recent films. . . and got new plastic boats.

Half the fun was before they even got into the ride.

Aunt Julie was nice and took the boys on the teapots. . . Mom and Dad don't do the teapots.

You can see why:

But they had lots of fun.

Day 2 - Legoland

Here's some pictures from day 2 of our trip.
We went to Legoland in Carlsbad, Ca.
It was kind of in between Lagoon and Disneyland.
It wasn't too busy, but we did stand in plenty of lines.
The whole lego theme was really fun and there were lots of cool things to see. . . just as fun as the rides.

Day 1 - San Diego

It is not every day that you see a time machine.

So we enjoyed our first day in San Diego.
We got to see a lot of cool things and went to some nice parks.
Mark informed us that the parks were boring.
I guess he'll get his fill of not-so-boring parks starting tomorrow.
But today we just wanted to take it easy.

However, the pictures do provide some evidence that everything wasn't too boring. :)

Here's the monument/memorial building for the Mormon Batallion. . . .

These are pictures from Old Town. . . Very fun victorian and antique stuff. . . Grandma would have had a ball!





Then off to Balboa park which was very beautiful. The colors came out real good on the photos because it was overcast for most of the day.

There's more to the story, but we'll have to share the rest of it when we get back. We need to get to bed for the busy park week that starts tomorrow.

Love you all!

Captain EO on You Tube

So Marthe and I got talking about Captain EO the other day and I did a google search to see if anyone has posted the movie somewhere. . . they have.

You can now watch the short movie on you tube.

So if you are dying to delve into a bit of nostalgia. . . .do a search for captain eo on you tube and enjoy. Now all our spouses can get more insight into why we are so wierd.

U2 - New Album Commentary

U2 Has a new album. I downloaded the album the other day. . . I had to convince myself that I didn't need the actual CD. Usually I buy the CD, rip the songs to MP3 and then store the CD in my closet. I'm running out of storage space now. . . so I realize now that downloading songs is probably the way to go. I can always burn the MP3s to a CD if I want. But most of the time I will just listen to them on my iPod.
Anyway, the new U2 album reminds me of Zooropa. When U2 came out with their landmark album Actung Baby and went on tour, they wrote the songs for Zooropa while they were on tour for Actung Baby. The result was an album that sounded a bit like Actung Baby with some other experimental numbers.
I think No Line On The Horizon will be more successful than Zooropa, but it sounds kind of like the previous album and it has several songs that are more experimental.
The main single, "Get On Your Boots" reminds me a mix between "Vertigo" and "Wild Wild West by the Escape Club". It is probably my least favorite song on the CD. There are a few songs that are more raw and were done in a similar vein as songs from the Unforgettable Fire album. . . most likely because of using the same bunch of producers. The result is a pretty unique, yet very U2-sounding album. It will take longer for it to grow on my than How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, but I am liking it.

I forgot to post this earlier, but it is official. I am now a licensed architect in the state of Utah. It is a good feeling to finally get the actual license. Thanks to all of you who helped me get to this point.