We're Going to DIDNEYWAND!!!!!

It's been awhile since an update.

It's been a whirlwind around here with my kids and daycare kids and plays and performances, Christmas shopping, sicknesses, and trip planning.

We leave for Disneyland in 3 days.
THREE.
I'm so excited I think I finally get how people can become Disney crazed.
Well.
Maybe not.

It is all I think about, though.

I think about the look on the girls' faces as they enter the gates, the excitement when we go on the rides. I think about probably having to hold Chloe up when she spots her first princess. She's already told me, with eyelashes batting, that she wonders if she can watch a prince and princess dance and then "have true Love's first kiss."

I also think about all the things that could go wrong.

Justin in a sugar coma.

My mom neglecting to bring enough warm items and telling me 100 times how cold she is while she shoves her icy fingers against my skin and says,
"Feel. Feel how cold my hands are?!"

Tessa missing her nap and biting off Chloe's head for even LOOKING at her wrong.

Alena pouting that she has to go on It's a Small World.....AGAIN and her feet hurt and she wants a souvenir and can she please have some candy.

Me trying to shove fun down my family's throat so hard that I give myself a cramp and an anxiety attack and am found rocking in the corner of Ariel's Grotto.

I picture Justin running through the streets of Downtown Disney with Tessa's child harness on - Eyes bulging - Maniacal grin on his face - Cinnamon roll in one hand and funnel cake in the other.

I picture all sorts of things, really.

One never can go on a family vacation with their entire family which includes a toddler, a preschooler, a moody spouse, a pre-teen and their mother and NOT expect some sort of sideshow to take place.

I just think back to camping.....

I, of course, will be completely innocent. Wink, wink.

We're staying in a suite.
I have ideals about how Tessa will miraculously sleep wonderfully in a pack-n-play in a room with me, Justin, and Chloe.
I have other ideals that we'll actually get to Disneyland early and perhaps, just this once, we WON'T be sitting on the fold up couch all dressed waiting for Justin to FINALLY get out of the shower.

My heart hopes it will be better than all the commercials, and my kids' faces alone will make it worth the money we saved in order for us to be there.
My head says I'd better prepare myself for a few "moments."

It's fine, though.

What is my life without comedy that comes from every day moments?

I say BRING IT ON to all of it.
The joy, the excitement, the tears, the eye rolling, the possible throwing up on the teacups.

It'll be all the more to write about.
All the more to document and laugh over later.

I pray we even get down there without clawing each other to pieces.

My dad let us borrow his Sequoia for the trip. I just didn't trust driving the van that smells like you doused it in gasoline and shakes if you go above 50.

After driving it around town today, he may never get it back.
I LOVE it.
I will choose to just breathe in the sweet smell of leather and Starbucks coffee as we travel and overlook the fact that the DVD player has cordless headphones and Tessa keeps turning hers off then crying and saying,
"It not working! I can't heaw it!"

I just have to be OK with the fact that my mom will have to pee a LOT
and Justin will need protein in massive amounts in order to keep from going postal and driving his foot into the floorboard causing us to become a Green Family Missile zipping down I5.

He's not used to being in the car all the time with the kids.
He's not used to Cheese-its ground into the carpet.

I'm so thankful we're leaving the dog with friends. Adding her atrocious gas to all this mix would put me over the edge.

No amount of Disney Magic would be able to fix us after that kind of car ride.

So.....Wish us luck.

I'm sure I'll have plenty to tell about after we return.
Or while we're there and I sneak away with the laptop to send an S.O.S. in the wee hours of the morning.

Disneyland is getting a whole new cast of characters.