Christmas Break - Day 1

Tracy and I are both suckers for a good surprise.  We like throwing each other surprise parties, getting the perfect unsuspected gift, and blowing the other's mind with festive sleights of hand.  So, it's a double gift to our daughter, who gets our full concentrated efforts directed at her.

This Christmas break afforded us the opportunity to travel to California and to surprise our daughter with a trip to Disneyland.  This trip was months in the making and Tracy and I meticulously planned each detail with our daughter out of earshot.  She had been asking for a trip to Disneyland for months, but we'd told her that only "five year olds get to go to Disneyland." Her birthday is in a couple of months, so the anticipation was building, but she didn't suspect the time frame.

We didn't even tell her we were going on vacation until the morning we had to leave for the airport.  When she woke up, we told her she was going to the beach in California on an airplane.  She was overjoyed.  The only time she'd had experience with an airplane was when she watched her mother and I jump out of one with parachutes.  She was over-the-moon excited.

We jumped on the airplane and Shea took to it with no problems whatsoever.  She loved takeoff and landing and even asked if we were going to jump out of the airplane with parachutes.  I told her, "It's not the kind of airplane, honey."  She was captivated by the process the whole way.  Tickled by salty pretzels and a glass of orange juice, she nestled into her seat and watched a movie on a borrowed portable DVD player.

When we landed in San Diego, we had a bit of driving to do before we got our resort and Shea was a bit restless, but she held on through our stop to the grocery store and the check-in process.  When we finally managed to get into our condo, this was the view that greeted us.  For rain-soaked Portlanders, there isn't a better view to be had in December (well, unless it's the top of a snow-covered peak).  Our adventure together had begun.