Anaheim to Lancaster.

Track - Heart of Gold - Neil Young.
"If you can dream it, you can do it." Walt Disney.

Day 14.

Dylans birthday was started with present opening and the usual morning routine. Honey-Sue kindly gave us their address to stay when we are in Arkansas and then we headed to Disneyland.  It was smooth from the start with parking and the shuttle in. Dylan was given a big badge, sorry button, with Happy Birthday on it and then congratulated by everyone he saw all day.

We started easy with Its a small world and the Tiki Room and then we upped the game. Dylan refused to go on Roger Rabbits ride as their were wierd sound effects and it was dark in the queue and then we made him endure Pirates of the Caribbean during which he opened his eyes for approximately 2 secs. He had his revenge on Pete though who bottled it half way up Tarzans treehouse and took great pleasure in telling everyone that daddy was scared of heights.

There was lots of character cuddling and we made tigger wait whilst we deleted some of the videos so we had some memory. He was fine about it - he was literally speechless. That's the wonderful thing about tigger.

Solomon was great all day and stared wide eyed at everything. There were literally tears of joy in dylans eyes as he waved at all the charactors in the parade and then Pete and Becs treated themselves to a delicious meal in fake New Orleans, the Blue Bayou, a restaurant in the middle of the Pirates ride.

 We left at 9pm as the park closed feeling all warm and disneyfied and hit a truly epic drive across LA. The 6 lane freeway went straight through the skyscrapers and it was the first real test of becs' navigation skills and Petes RV manuvering. Luckily the sight of a 25ft RV late at night driven by foreign idiots through sunset boulevard etc was enough to give us some space.

 We arrived in Lancaster and although the Dooleys had kindly waited up for us, we kipped on the drive in the van as we were too tired to unpack.

  Day 15

 Moved into the guest house and we were treated to a lovely homecooked breakfast of eggs straight from the chickens / pigeon and then had a great day hanging out with Travis - Petes second cousin originally from California, Nicole (originally from Queensland Australia) and Aubrey (also aged 4) a fantastic combination of the two.

Dylan had a bit of a crush and was showing off. Being 4 yrs old has brought with it some challenging behaviour including a new trick of mimicing everything you say during a telling off. For example, "No YOU'RE being ridiculous Daddy" and the even more tricky "but I can see you laughing Mummy" and then in total melt down mode," I wanna go home "- which is a particularly low blow given what we are trying to do here!

Still he really enjoyed toys such as an electric car and watching some TV. We had a lovely bbq in the evening and a few beers and then watched The Hunger Games, a great film.

Day 16

Lovely night sleep in the Dooleys guest house and had a chance to catch up on admin with approx 8 loads of washing (all dry on the line in 30 mins - mums here don't know their luck) and pete took the kids off to the play park whilst becs put the first edition to the blog online. Thanks to Nicole for hours of arsing around with our photos and dropbox. The remainder of the photos included will be taken on the tablet itself as getting them off the proper camera is a job for back home. Had a fantastic mexican buffet for lunch and then some snoozing and paddling pool action in the afternoon.