The Happiest Place!
By Jen Rouse
The Short Years
Oregon Blog
So far at Disneyland we’ve visited with princesses and fairies, blasted laser guns at evil aliens, flown through the air on rocket ships and elephants. And that was just the first day. Really, so far it’s been a total blast. But here’s the best thing about our vacation, hands-down: just all hanging out as a family.
When you’re at home, there’s always something to do. Even if you purposely take a day or two off to hang out, you’ve got the laundry piling up and the dishes in the sink, and phone calls and e-mails, and on vacation there’s none of that. (Well, ok, a little, since we obviously do have internet access at this hotel). But mostly, we’re spending hours of each day in each other’s company, far more than we normally do at home, and it’s been great.
When we’re at home, too, I find that if I spend the entire day hanging out with my kids without any relief from interaction with someone else–some down time, some alone time–I am drained and frankly tired of them at the end of the day. Not so at Disneyland.
Not that there haven’t been moments of whininess or frustration, but overall–whether it’s the influence of the Magic Kingdom, with its fantastic amounts of cleanliness and friendliness and overall cheerful efficiency, or pixie dust in the air, our absolute insistence on afternoon naps for everyone, every day–it’s been a fabulous, fabulous trip, with the girls as perfectly behaved as a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old could be expected to be.
Mostly, I think that this trip facilities the opportunity for adults to just be kids again themselves, and the kids respond to that with sheer delight. Yes, Disneyland is shamelessly exploiting kids’ fascination with movies and cartoons and trying to get us to buy them lots of plastic crap at every turn. But the place does it so cheerfully and perfectly and they’re showing us such a great time that I don’t even care. For us, for this trip, for right now, walking through those gates each day does feel like entering a magic kingdom, and I kind of don’t really want to leave. You think maybe they won’t notice if we just stay down here for about a year?
We might have to give that a try.
**A note: I tried to include some pictures of our Disney bliss, but blogger is having uploading problems right now, so you’ll just have to image how cute we all are at Disneyland 🙂
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