The California Kids

This picture is from one of the California trips in 2007. We spent more than 30 days at Disneyland that year and fulfilled one of my dreams by purchasing Premium Passes, the ticket that lets a person into Disneyland for free for a year.

Anna is wearing her little red sweatshirt we bought her, and Tommy is holding a juice container--something he and Jack carried around the house at that age. When they started doing Picasso types of artistic moves with them on the walls, we knew they were too old to have them in hand. They now drink from glasses and the walls no longer have juice splashes.

When we did the first day at the park on any one of those trips, Jack would not realize we were actually there until we stepped out of the car. "Oh, thank you grandma and Pop Pop," he would say each time. For Tommy, living in California and thirty minutes from the magical place meant having a hard time understanding such elation from getting out of the car at the Disney Parking Lot to get aboard a tourist transport. Both boys always had their favorite rides, but it was Anna who had the classic request that would turn the heads of all adults who ever had little ones. "I wanna go Pooh," she would say. In English classes I once taught, that would have been an ambiguous statement, but for all of us--including Jack and Tommy--we knew she wanted to ride the Winnie the Pooh ride. It also usually meant going two or three times while we were there.