The 2013 Doo Dah Parade

Everyone (well, most people in the United States and anyone who reads this blog) knows that Pasadena is famous for the Rose Parade. This parade is so iconic and we are fortunate to now live near the end of the parade and earlier this year we watched it live. However, what you may not know is that Pasadena is also famous for the Doo Dah Parade. This sometimes annual parade (or occasional parade) is everything that is almost the opposite of the Rose Parade.

We are no strangers to parades. In fact, Ellie has learned to love parades. She LOVES them. Between the Bunker Hill Day Parades, parades at Disneyland, the summer solstice parade in Santa Barbara, local 4th of July parades, and as previously discussed, the Rose Parade. The Doo Dah parade was new to all of us and it was unlike anything we have ever seen or experienced.

You know its going to be a good parade when the first entry to the official parade is bag pipers playing "Zip-a-dee Doo Dah".

There was lots of music. Both bands on the backs of flatbed trucks, single musicians with amplifiers, and lots of singing and dancing. And of course, no parade is legit without a marching band!

There were lots of interesting vehicles. A car that looked like a toaster. A VW bug that was decked out like a baboon, complete with an opening mouth. The Blues Brothers car. And our favorite, cupcake vehicles. These were so cute and so much fun.

Of course, music and vehicles do make for a great parade. But there were also other interesting entries. I'm not quite sure how to explain them.

There was also the marching grill and hibachi team. They were grilling and passing out actual hot dogs.

All the entries made the parade entertaining, fun, and memorable. But apparently there is a tradition that we were not aware of when we first arrived. People throw tortillas at the parade. Yes, you read that right. Tortillas a flung at entries in the parade. The more you like something, the more you throw. The kids got into it by running into the street and grabbing previously thrown tortillas so that they had a chance to throw some. Ellie thought this was hilarious and had so much fun gathering the tortillas.

Anyway, we had a blast. Between laughing, wondering what was going on, throwing tortillas, singing and dancing. Definitely going to keep our eyes out for a parade next year (its not an annual event, sometimes, kinda). Well, we will definitely be headed to the next one.

First of the strawberry harvest

A few weeks, or like a month ago, when we were up in Santa Barbara, my mom was nice enough to offer me a couple strawberry plants which had grown from runners off of their plants. I took 4 plants and then Ellie helped me plant them into some pots once we got home. Fast forward a few weeks and look what Ellie found...

She certainly was excited to find the ripe strawberry. Especially as it was on the littlest plant she helped put in the smallest pot, which of course means that this plant and all the strawberries it produces are hers.  We did discuss how the strawberry grew and we looked at the flowers and the little green strawberries. Ellie was fascinated about how the flowers turn into the strawberries and then they turn red and you can eat them! Fortunately between the strawberry plants that we have there were various stages of berry growth to illustrate the process to Ellie.

After getting a couple of photos of her with the first ripe strawberry in our new house I let her pick it. I'm pretty excited that we have strawberry plants producing actual fruit in our backyard. That's one of the best things about SoCal is the awesome weather for continuous gardening and fun outside. As most know, strawberries are probably one of my favorite things in the world. At least they are my favorite food. So you can understand how difficult it was for me to let Ellie eat the very first strawberry from our garden. But hey, I'm a mom, and that's what we do.
 

 She was pretty excited about it. 

At least she let me take photos of her eating the berry.

She said it was delicious. I said that the next strawberry was mine!

Ear tube Update

Ellie no longer as tubes in her ears!


Just before Christmas 2009 and before Ellie was 1, she had her first surgery. After months of continuous ear infections and after discussions with doctors we decided tubes were the best thing for her. The constant low grade fevers from the infections, changing of antibiotics consistently, and her constant pain (that she had started to not acknowledge, as the pain was normal for her), and worries of reduced capacity hearing were some of the reasons we opted for the tubes. The surgery was in total 10-15 minutes and she had anesthesia. She recovered quickly and we actually had an early Christmas the evening of the surgery.

Almost overnight we noticed a change. She was happier, less cranky, and her verbal skills developed very fast.

Since her surgery we have gone to an ENT doctor every six months to check the tubes. Last summer at her regular checkup with her new CA ear doc he said the tube in her right ear had fallen out and it had healed. The left tube was still there. At out appt this winter, he said the tube in the left ear was out, but trapped and a little "wonky". No concern and he said just to come back in 6 months.

During our vacation we noticed Ellie had some over sensitivity to the music and noise. I called the doc who said to bring her in to check out her ear drum was healing. So Nick took her this past Wednesday and came home with a souvenir.

The doctor just removed it in the office and said her ear drum had healed well.

Before you think I'm crazy for saving this and putting it in her baby box let me explain: I am the product of a woman who still has my sisters removed tonsils in the freezer! [Update: Apparently the above statement is incorrect. The tonsils are in formaldehyde on a shelf in the kitchen. My mom also saved gallstones removed during my gallbladder removal in 2003, which are also on the shelf with the tonsils.]

Ellie gets a haircut

Saturday Ellie got her second haircut. Her hair was getting a little long and very tangled. Her last haircut was way back in July!!

She was excited but a little nervous. She thinks she has the longest hair in school and wanted to keep her hair long. Fortunately I got a haircut the same day right before her haircut, so she understood you can get a haircut without cutting all your hair off.








We went back to the same place we had gone for her first cut so it was a little familiar. She wasn't nervous about sitting in the chair by herself. She was somewhat distracted by the birthday party going on in the space adjacent, especially as the party had two 36" diameter pizzas...that's a BIG pizza.









She held her head still when she was told to and did well listening to the stylists instructions. Her nose was a bit runny and it was funny watching her struggle between holding still, sniffling, and fighting the urge wipe her nose. The cut turned out really well. When I asked Ellie to stand still so I could get an "after" picture, this happened...


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Disney World 2013

We went to Disney World. It was amazing. We spent 6 days at Disney World during Ellie's recent spring break. We stayed at the Contemporary Resort hotel, which is the one where the Monorail drives through it and is walking distance to the Magic Kingdom. It was perfect for us.

The first day we woke up early, was at the Magic Kingdom by 7am, right when the park opened. It was still dark outside it was that early. We were early enough to explore the new Fantasyland without crowds, and we hit all the rides in Fantasyland before breakfast. We had breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and his friends. We then headed out and hit all the rides in Tomorrowland, which Ellie was tall enough for (at 39 7/8" tall, in shoes she was below the 40" height requirement for all the big kid rides like Space Mountain). The new Dumbo in Fantasyland is pretty unique, they have a play area where you check in and get a pager, like at restaurants. You get to hang out in the play area until the pager buzzes signaling it is your turn to get to ride Dumbo. Ellie, I think, enjoyed the play area more than the ride. But she did love the "little kid roller coaster", aka Goofy's Barnstormer. She also loved driving the cars in Autopia. I was riding with her and pointed out the view of the castle, she said to me, "Mommy! I can't look at the castle, I have to focus, I'm driving!"

Lunch the first day was also pretty awesome. We ate one of the new restaurants in Fantasyland, Belle's dining room. Well, it was designed to be the fancy dining room in the Beast's castle. It was great food, and amazing decor. Then we checked the weather forecast and noted that it was supposed to rain soon, so we decided to take the Monorail to our hotel to chill for a little bit until the storm passed. Well, on the way to the Monorail, someone decided they had a potty emergency and so we had a little side trip to a bathroom. Then, as we were waiting for the next Monorail, a monsoon hit. Yes, a monsoon. There was a tornado warning and the sky was black, and the buckets of rain were coming at us sideways. Disney stopped running the Monorail because the winds were too strong and it wasn't safe. So we were stuck, outside in a monsoon. We finally got on a bus and made it back to our hotel. We spent about 90 minutes with a hair dryer trying to dry our shoes. By the time we had changed and the shoes were dry enough to wear, the storm had passed. And so we headed back to the Magic Kingdom where we met Mickey and some of the princesses and rode more rides. Ellie was afraid of the People Mover (well, actually she loved it until it went through Space Mountain and became pitch black, that was scary) and she really liked the "Moving Building ride" aka Carousel or Progress. We stayed up late for the Electric Lights Parade.

 Day 2 we again were up early and headed to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Ellie was really confused, because she kept asking if we were going to Daddy's work, because he works in Hollywood. We had to explain that this was a pretend Hollywood. She looked at us like we were crazy for flying 5 hours on a plane and getting her up while it was still dark to go to a place which was pretending to be something where Nick worked and was like 10 minutes away by car. We told her to trust us. And well, we figured out that there really wasn't much there that kept her interested. She was too short for the fun rides, and the rides she could go on she thought were scary, like the Movie Studio Tour where your car gets hijacked by a mobster and there is a pretend gun fight. There was however, a live Little Mermaid show which she enjoyed and a show with her Disney Junior friends. However, her favorite thing was either lunch at Pizza Planet or playing in the Honey I shrunk the Kids playground. She also enjoyed the parade, as usual, and meeting lots of different characters. Nick and I were happy to meet the monsters from Monsters Inc. Nick and Ellie also spent some quality time together making a driod. Well, you picked a body, head, and accessories. Again, we stayed up late for Fantasmic which Ellie really seemed to enjoy once the scary parts were over.

 

 

Day 3 we spent the morning in the Magic Kingdom. We rode her favorite roller coaster and Winnie the Pooh. But really, we were in the Magic Kingdom that morning for breakfast at Cinderella's castle. Cinderella greeted us at the entrance and then we went up to her dining hall where all her friends (Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, and Snow White) were hanging out. We had an amazing and huge breakfast. Ellie was excited to show Sleeping Beauty she had her picture on her shoes. She really enjoyed the activity sheet she got and actually was a little too engrossed when Jasmine came by, fortunately she was patient and waited until Ellie finished what she was doing.

 

 

Then after our royal breakfast we headed over to Epcot. We spent a couple hours there and then headed rght back to Magic Kingdom for dinner. We had made dinner reservations ahead of time so we bounced between parks sometimes for food. At Epcot she really seemed to enjoy the Nemo ride and the Turtle Talk (which was really hilarious). It was actually really really cold that day, cold for us Southern Californians, and windy, so we stayed bundled up most the day. We also found another playground that she enjoyed at Epcot. We hit the other rides she was tall enough for, Maelstrom and the Mexico river ride (which she really enjoyed, as it is no longer as educational as Nick and I remembered it, but Donald gets lost in Mexico and you ride around trying to find him). We then headed back to Magic Kingdom with time for another People Mover ride (Ellie and my mom are probably the only people who would wait in line for this ride) and dinner. As exhausted and cold as we were, we decided to head back to the hotel early, like 8:30 (still late for Ellie) and try and get some decent sleep.

Ellie super happy on the People Mover

 

Day 4 again we were up early and headed out to Animal Kingdom. We hit the safari ride first which was good timing, because they had just let out all the animals and so we saw most of them wandering around headed to their favorite spots. Then we spent some time at the DinoLand (meant for the littlier kids) where Ellie again found an awesome playground. We were happy Ellie enjoyed this so Nick and I could take turns riding the big kid roller coaster which we both think is awesome! We all enjoyed the Nemo show, which was really a very condensed (only 30 minutes long) version of their Broadway production complete with the amazing puppets and special effects. We then had a special lunch where Mickey and his friends were hanging out after their safari tour.

 

After lunch, we headed back to Epcot as there were some things we had missed...like the ride within the big Epcot ball, Spaceship Earty. Which Nick and I remembered as boring and lame, but had been jazzed up quite a bit since we were last there. We all really enjoyed it. There was also a butterfly garden which had Tinkerbell and her friends decorated with flowers and littel fairie houses, which was really cute. We also had a chance to meet Mary Poppins.

 

 

Our 5th and final day at Walt Disney World, well at the parks, was a doozy. We hit 3 different parks in the same day and Magic Kingdom actually twice! We started off in Magic Kingdom, as Ellie wanted to hit the little kid roller coaster one (or two) last times. Then we headed off to what was probably everyone's favorite attraction, Enchanted Tales with Belle. This was a character meet and greet, but not just a normal one. The kids actually acted out a play with Belle. Each kid got to be a character, Ellie was picked to be the little tea cup Chip, and they practiced, then Belle came in and they acted it out. It was pretty amazing.

Nick and Ellie in the front of the roller coaster

 

 

We also had to visit the Hall of Presidents while at Magic Kingdom. Ellie wasn't that impressed.

We also had a terrific breakfast, probably one my favorite meals (without princesses or characters present). And made sure to make time to visit Daisy and Minnie.

 

Then it was back to Epcot. We went to some more of the country showcases, like Canada, but also took time to meet Alice and eat the obligatory Mickey shaped ice cream (she insisted on taking off her princess dress so she wouldn't get ice cream on it). Ellie also got in a good nap, which was perfect because we were going to stay up for fireworks this night!

 

After nap it was back to Hollywood Studios for another ride on Star Tours for Nick and more time at her favorite playground for Ellie. We had dinner reservations at our favorite restaurant, the Sci-Fi Cafe. Here you eat in "cars" and get to watch previews for old Sci-Fi movies and see the old drive-in commercials. Its a lot of fun and the food is amazing.

Then we headed back to Magic Kingdom just in time for the electrical parade again and fireworks. Ellie had been telling us she was afraid of fireworks, but she was super excited and loved them! We stayed up super late this night, by the time we made it back to the hotel it was after 11pm! But we knew the next day we didn't have to get up early and would be spent at the pool. Ellie went on her first water slide at the hotel pool and loved it. After a couple hours at the pool, we got dressed and headed to the airport.

 

This was such a fun vacation, actually the first of us where we didn't go and visit family somewhere. Ellie was a real trooper getting up early and going to bed late and spending the day almost running between attractions...but with the amount of amazing food we were eating we all had the energy. She loved meeting her favorite princesses, especially the Belle attraction. She didn't let that she wasn't 40 inches stop her from enjoying thrill rides like Spaceship Earth, the People Mover, as well as her favorite the little kid roller coaster (Goofy's Barnstormer). It took us all probably 2 days to recover from our vacation. We will all cherish the memories of Ellie's first Walt Disney World vacation!