disneyland

Here's a recap of our Disneyland trip from the email I sent my missionary
brothers:

-----Original Message-----
From: Hillary Divis
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 12:21 AM
To: Ellery Watkins; Stuart Watkins
Subject: disneyland

Hey guys,

So much crazy stuff to share, but I'm sure mom will fill you in on
EVERYTHING so I'll give you the short of it.

I bought the wrong tickets for Disneyland - they weren't valid to use till
January! - so we paid the difference & upgraded to annual passes.

We bought our hotel on hotwire. It wasn't horrible but I'd never stay there
again & Jeremiah says no more hotwire! :) Our room was right by the freeway
so it was pretty noisy. In fact Jack woke up early the first morning & said
he couldn't sleep anymore because it was too noisy!

Disneyland/CA Adventure itself was super fun w/the kids. Jack & Callie each
had $30 to spend that they'd been saving up for a LOOOONG time. Probably 8
mos or something. Jack bought a new pirate telescope & a pirate sword. And
also a buzz lightyear gun & a mickey mouse light saber thing. Callie got a
mylar princess balloon & a plush cat (Marie from Aristocats) that has a bow
around the neck & a blanket - both which you can take off & put back on &
she LOVES them! She keeps saying things like you guys need to be quiet,
Marie's trying to go to sleep. And she feeds her fruit snacks. She LOVES
that cat! LOL

Dad's truck blew a gasket or something (major) on Saturday. Jer had to go
get him & I asked to be dropped off w/the kids at Disneyland while he did
it. He insisted he'd only be gone like 20 mins. 2 or 2 1/2 hours later he
finally got back! LOL I should have insisted since we'd already had to
check out of our room & just had to sit in mom's waiting. Jer & I & fam
were supposed to stay the night at Justin/Jamie's & Jamie & I had planned
little Christmas activities for the kids. Ellie was sick though & Katelyn
gets sick real easily so we left Ellie w/dad & girls & took Jack/Callie to
Justin/Jamie's for a couple of hours, then we drove dad to Barstow to get
Tara's car to take it back to Anaheim since Kay's flight wasn't until today
& they still had a hotel for the night. Jer & I (& fam) went home & got in
about 12:30am. Jeremiah got up this morning & got ready & hooked up to a
trailer to go get dad's truck. In Barstow there was a problem so Jeremiah
was there for 4 hours! It was getting late when he finally got to Jason's
house!

So it's been one big crazy thing after another it seems. But it was still a
really fun couple of days at Disneyland & I know we're EXTREMELY BLESSED to
be able to have gone to Disneyland for a couple of days & stayed in a hotel
& bought food & souvenirs in the park & everything.

Today after Jer jimmy-rigged the fake Christmas tree into the stand & took
off, the kids & I finished putting the tree up & decorating it & getting our
house all ready for Christmas. I'm trying to not panic about Christmas
being in just over 2 WEEKS! The 2 big things I have to do for the holidays
are neighbor gifts & Christmas cards. I'm mostly just stressing about the
neighbor gifts only because I don't have all the supplies I need & it's
gonna be hard to get them in a timely manner when I don't have a dang craft
store here. I'm going fairly simple I think, but I still need supplies!

Anyway, I know this is too long - sorry. Enjoy the pictures! I love & miss
you both!

Love, hill