Murphy Went to Disneyland With Us

It's been two years and nine months since Cat and Darren got married, which means it's been that long since we were last in LA. Now that Aogu has a client out there, I decided to invite the rest of the family along for his current trip. And I thought that since Koji is not yet four, we would take this last chance to get him into Disneyland for free. You idiot, you're saying, Disneyland is not free once you're THREE, not four. Well, I know that now, but by the time I figured it out I had convinced myself that we HAD to go anyway.

Keep in mind that we had arrived in LA late on the previous afternoon, checked into our hotel and then heard that we wouldn't be able to meet the friend we had planned to see. To compensate, I took the kids out and stayed that way for a little too long. Finally, I got them back to our room and in bed and asleep, which was a miracle since we were all in the same room. Then I couldn't sleep because it was still not late by Chicago standards. At last, we all were asleep and then the fire alarm went off! No joke!!

When we heard it and noted that it was 2 a.m., we were so dazed that we thought the goofy kids who were in town for the tennis tournament were playing joke with their alarm clocks or something. Aogu eventually figured out that it was for real, so we woke the kids up and carried them down five flights of stairs to stand around in the parking lot in our pajamas. Thankfully we had the key to our rental car, so I got in with the kids and blasted some heat.

As for the fire, it wasn't that at all. Rather, a sprinkler had gone haywire in the fitness room and flooded it, which somehow set off a fire alarm. Water was dripping heavily from the ceiling of the lobby, and some of the tiles were even falling out. At long last, we were allowed to go back to our room and back to bed, but we did not get much sleep!

Nevertheless, we trooped off to Dland, arriving at a little past 10. We had a Mickey cookie--pictured above--for a mid-morning snack, then we walked through the castle and rode the carousel. Next up was the Dumbo ride, which Aogu and Koji waited for at least an hour to get on.

Next on the agenda was cotton candy, note that all so-called dietary caution was thrown to the wind for the sake of a fun day at Disney! Koji was acting pretty sluggish and I thought it was weird, but I chalked it up to the sleep deprivation of the night before.
So we motored off to Toontown, where Koji experienced his first roller coaster. It was while the two of us were waiting in line next a giant comb that he said it. "Mama? I want to go home." EXCUSE ME?! This is the same child that never ever wants to go home from anywhere and lets me know it loudly and clearly when I say that we are leaving (exception: food markets).

This declaration was so out of character for him that I knew there was something seriously wrong, so I started poking around at him and sure enough! He had a fever!

Can you stand the irony of it? Of course, though I wanted to just have him take a nap in the stroller and then press on, Aogu (wisely) insisted that we should leave. So we did, five hours after we arrived. Try to resist calculating our per-hour rate for all that fun...

Thankfully, two good things came out of this craziness: first, though I was sure the whole thing was a fiasco, Koji later declared that we had a lot of fun at Disneyland and that he wants to go there again. Phew. I didn't want him to be scarred by the incident; "Disneyland makes me sick" or something of the sort. Second, we were hungry, so we just had to stop at In-N-Out Burger.

Murphy, I don't actually believe in you, but just in case: next time, stay back at the hotel and clean up the fitness room. No Mickey cookies or double-doubles animal-style for you.
P.S. A very happy FOURTH birthday to Ashleigh Michelle!