Eaton Spring Break 09 Day #1

So Wednesday afternoon, the girls came and picked me up at school and off we went to the airport. The Eaton's were off on our Spring Break Disneyland adventure. Of course, two days earlier we decided to put our house up for sale, Jackie closed All Shook Up, Jackie's parent's came out to stay at our house (where we quickly put them to work doing odd-jobs) to see Jackie in her show and Jackie painted and boxed up half the house. The packing was very simple for our trip- whatever Jackie hadn't already boxed up and put in storage, that's what we could take.

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time anticipating horrible lines- but we made it through check-in and security with only 2 melt downs (#1- Millie saying goodbye to her Princess luggage and it went to be X-Rayed- or to the "suitcase doctor" #2- taking off her Crocs to walk through the security scanner).

At the gate, I quickly abandoned the girls to pick up necessities: bottled water, milk for Ellis (you can always count on Starbucks), Diet Coke for Jackie, Coke for me and People and US magazines- for everyone. While we waited at the gate, Millie and Ellis terrorized fellow travelers by running around with the stroller- and we didn't care.

On the plane trip to LAX, Jackie came well-prepared with a bag of tricks. Ellis liked looking out the window for 0.2 seconds- and after that she wanted whatever Millie had. My Ipod- fully loaded with episodes of Little Einsteins lasted 2 episodes- after which the battery croaked.

After the plane ride, we collected our baggage and we were off to board the Disneyland Express bus. On the bus (with luckily only about 8 other travelers), Ellis proceeded to have melt-downs #1,2,3 and 4 until I held her on my lap on the back of the bus until she fell asleep. Millie drained the Ipod of whatever life was left until we got to the Disneyland Hotel- not our final destination. It was at that point (1 minute away from our hotel) that I realized that I never received a confirmation number from my online reservation- all I had was my receipt. I quickly had Jackie call the company while the collector came down the row to collect the confirmation tickets (which I didn't have). Jackie got no help from the company so I tried to look as pitiful as possible (which was helped by a sleeping 1-year old on my lap) and the guy took my receipt and gave us a return confirmation ticket for our round-trip bus ride. Yay!

We arrived at the Howard Johnson Anaheim and got our room. Everyone was beyond tired but we trudged over to the Disneyland ticket booth to get our 3 Day Park Hopper Passes- the day before (so we didn't have to stand in line the next morning). We stopped at McDonald's walking back to the hotel (where Ellis's proceeded to only eat ketchup).
As we put the girls to bed, we realized that Ellis could not sleep in the same room with Millie. All Ellis would do is bounce up and down in her crib and make Millie laugh. So, we put put her in closet. The crib barely fit, (and Ellis could open and close the door if she chose to), but peace finally arrived when we put her in the closet and closed the door. The Eaton's were fast asleep at 8:30pm eagerly awaiting our 5:00am wake up call the next morning. Our Disney dreams were about to come true.