Disneyland Flashback

About 10 years ago we decided to take our kids to Disneyland.  At the time we had three children ages 6, 3, and 1.  We left Grandma's house early in the morning, parked, and purchased tickets and were ready for a fun day at the “happiest place on earth.”  A few hours later, our oldest child announced he was bored and wanted to go back to grandma's house. We brushed him off and took him on more rides only to hear him say again that he just wanted to go back to Grandma's house.  After quite some time of listening to him whine about having to be at Disneyland, I kind of lost it.  In not the nicest voice, I told him that we had paid a lot of money to get in, we were staying until the end of the day, this was the happiest place on earth so he better stop whining about Grandma's house and just enjoy the day.  We did stay to the end of the day and had a good time, but we haven't returned to Disneyland since.

Donner State Park

For the first part of our big trip we are doing a road trip to Grandma's house.  Instead of driving the usual I-15 south to Southern California, we drove over to Reno, on to San Francisco and down the California coast.  The first few days went well, but shortly after crossing the California border I suggested we stop at Donner State Park and I heard, “do we have to stop?  Can't we just drive to  Grandma's house”.  I ignored the plea and we stopped at Donner State Park for a few hours.  Later when we were nearing San Francisco someone asked how long it would take because he just wanted to get to Grandma's house.  The kids did think the Golden Gate Bridge was pretty cool (and it was literally cold there).  But that was all the patience they had for San Francisco.  After telling them of other things we could do there, they decided they would rather start driving to Grandma's house.

Redwood State Park

We forced them to stop a few more times to see Redwood State Park (and yes they liked it), the Santa Barbara Mission (they thought it was boring) and to see some relatives.  But the the prevailing theme through it all was “when can we get to Grandma's house”.  I felt like it  was Disneyland all over again!  Here we are trying to take our kids to new places to experience new things and they just want to go to Grandma's house.  It is going to be a long year if anytime we want to do anything we hear, “let's just go to Grandma's house.”

 

Santa Barbara Mission