This post is more a journal entry for me. You may or may not enjoy it. You may or may not believe it. But it is true. And it happened to me.
We were having a perfect day going. We had arrived at good time to the park for our first day. It wasn't particularly hot day, nor was it terribly busy so we were on and off rides fairly quickly. We had a system down that involved Brad G running all over both parks to get us fast passes (he is THE BEST!) and Lori G made sure we hit all of the best rides first.
Good times until the evening... About 8 p.m., Todd decided he needed to go to the car to get our jackets for the new water show that was going to be starting soon. I needed to take Luke to buy him his souvenir that he wanted. So we both left the main group. We had our cell phones and a plan (I thought). Bad idea. Soon after leaving Todd, I tried to call his cell phone. No answer. Todd always answers his phone. Called again several times, rings and goes to voice mail. GREAT! I finally called his parents who were frustrated because they didn't know where I was and couldn't get a hold of Todd and they were worried we were not going to get seats to the fabulous water show. But the biggest stress was that Todd forgot to take his ticket with him as he left the park, so he couldn't get back in to the park and had no way of calling us. At one point, he called from our car phone which was in the parking structure, but the reception was horrible because he was on the bottom of the structure, so it didn't really help. So Todd left the parking lot so he could contact us and then got lost in the Disneyland maze and couldn't get back in for quite awhile. He was so stressed he had to pull to the side of the road and say a prayer to calm down and find his way back in to the parking lot. He finally got back and parked the car and made his way back to the entry way and tried to talk the attendants into letting him in the park without his ticket.. So fun. I must have just missed him, because I stood outside the entry way with his ticket for 20 minutes or so waiting for him to come. Needless to say, everyone was slightly stressed and Todd missed all of the light show and I saw only about 5 minutes of it.
After getting back together it took a few minutes for people to calm themselves and then we decided to buck up and have some more disneyland fun. We took the kids to the Bugs Life 3D movie, which is hilarious and super fun, except if you are Sadie. As noted in previous post, she had quite the scare. At one point in the show, big holes open up in the roof and huge ugly spiders are lowered down towards the audience. I leaned over to look up and I think I knocked Sadie's glasses off her face, but they got caught in her hair and were just hanging there. When she looked up to see what I was seeing and saw the spiders, and then felt something hanging from her hair and then looked out of the corner or her eye in a dark theater and saw this black thing on her shoulder, tangled in her hair, she literally FREAKED out. She started convulsing and shaking her head and she threw those glasses 10 feet trying to get them off of her. Those of us who saw it laughed so hard, but I had to control myself because she thought she had almost been eaten. That was the one "ride" she said she didn't like and did not want to ever go in again.
So we were all in a jolly mood after that fun movie. We walked out to where our strollers were parked and found one, but could not find the other... At this point, it was very late and there had only been a couple of other strollers parked at the stroller parking, and ours was gone. STOLEN! AT THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH! I was freaking out because I couldn't remember what had been in the other stroller. We knew Sadie's most favorite blankie was in it and some disneyland mementos, but I couldn't remember what else. My stomach was sick and I was SO MAD! All of a sudden, Maddie yells, "Hey, there it is! There is Sadie's blanket!" I look up and see a few hundred yard away, 2 teenaged girls with a stroller, one sitting in it, COVERING HERSELF WITH MY BABY'S BLANKET, and they other one getting ready to push her in it. I tell you, I saw stars. I think I could have outrun Marion Jones, even with her doing steroids. I ran so fast, yelling all the way, "Hey! What are you doing? Stop!" Of course, the little minions had taken off running, but I caught them and put myself right in front of the stroller, grabbed Sadie's star blanket off the evil one and said "What are you doing with my stroller? Get out!!" What ensued will go down in history as one of the most memorable, maddening, frustrating and silly events of my life. These 2 girls could not speak English very well.. not kidding, they were troublemakers from Romania or Germany or somewhere like that. They acted like it was no big deal that they took our stroller on a joy ride. I pointed Luke's Buzz Lightyear gun at them as said "What do you just think every stroller comes equipped with it's own gun and blanket for your use??" Our party (20 people at this point) surrounded them and called for security because they just didn't seem to be taking it very seriously, had these little smirks on their faces and were saying things like "et es no big thing.." "ve didn't know it". In a very unchristianlike way, I said "Maybe you didn't know because you no speaky english?!" I was so MAD! Anywho.. after much waiting for security for 10 minutes or so, the foreigners decided I was really serious and they better apologize, so they did and I decided it wasn't worth my time to pursue. I had taken inventory and they didn't take anything, they were just dumb teenagers doing a dumb thing. I am so glad we came out when we did because 10 seconds later and they would have been gone and Eagle Eye Maddie would never have seen them and I would never have hear the end of "I WANT MY STAR BLANKIE!" and "I WANT MY BUZZ GUN".
So, my mother in law turned to me and said, "OK, that was #2 bad thing. They say they come in threes, so be prepared for the next thing." We laughed.. Ha ha ha! Surely we will not have a number 3 in Disneyland.
As we left the park a few minutes later, relatively unscathed, we laughed at the misfortunes and blunders of the last few hours. We reminisced about my red face as I defended my daughters blankie and rented stroller. We gave thanks that everything turned out OK. We climbed in our cars and pulled away from that Happiest Place feeling like we had dodged that last bullet, that number 3.
Mother in law's cell phone rings as we are driving away. She chuckles, gets off the phone and tells Todd to turn around. Brad E (my brother in law) was calling to tell us his minivan battery was dead, someone had left an interior light on all day. Back we went into that Happy place.
#3 could have been worse I guess.
All in all, kind of a funny day.
