The ride home from Disney was not nearly as fun as the ride there, I'm not sure if it was the lack of exciting anticipation to start the vacation or the fact that we had to begin with LA traffic but it took us forever to get out of the city and actually on the road. We had to get gas and then Holly had a super messy diaper then when we got over the mountain and pasted six flags and decided to stop for some food. Holly had a lot of energy so we went to a mcDonalds with an indoor playground which was fun but all this was add into to the length of our trip. Later we stopped again because I had to use the bathroom and ran out of my drink at Coalinga and when I opened the car door I felt like I was going to melt and the 1 minute walk inside made me feel like I was cooking. It was much hotter on this day driving home then when we drove to Disney. Later I checked what the temperature was and discovered it had been 105. I think it was around 7:45 when we got home.
That said there were lots of fun parts of our road trip too. Holly had new Princess dolls and she really liked them. We all also spent a lot of time singing in the car, and I got lots of time to chit chat with Joel. Holly has recently "learned" to sing herself. it has been really exciting for me. Sometimes her singing is more like shouting, but it is a long group of memorized words in a sing song like voice, and I have several video's of her little songs here.Happy Birthday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKvDeoXm9Y
So we have been learning time based on events, so our trip to "Tinkerbell's Castle" was after mommy's, Sara's, and Chloe's Birthday. Then she wanted to know when Daddy's Birthday was. We told her it was after Tinkerbell's Castle, and Kaylee's Birthday. Next Month. Sometimes though, she doesn't quite yet get how long away those times are. Here she decided to sing Happy Birthday to Daddy.
Rock-a-bye Tinkerbell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRLlk6dJKI
Here she is singing Rock-a-bye baby to Tinkerbell. It is one of the songs I sing to her and I have to replace baby with Mommy, or Daddy, or Chloe, or a friend from school. In this version she decided to sing it for Tinkerbell.
Holly Singing in Car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyag5cf1_vc
I was trying to catch her singing Doe a Deer as it makes my heart super happy but I only got the tale end and then she begins Rock-a-Bye baby in a tree top. The drive home from Disney to Berkeley is long and she has to entertain herself somehow :-) She actually sang Doe a Deer several times but we didn't have the camera ready
Resists singing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90lir8rVAic
After singing Doe a Deer several times, now that we have the video camera out and ready to refusing to sing it anymore. She is such a little gremlin, so cute in her trouble makingness that you just got to laugh. She know we want her to do something so she will do anything but that. Sigh!
Another thing Holly did to entertain herself was grab the camera from Daddy and take pictures. She took about 50 but I spared you by only posting a few shots. Most had her chubby little fingers in them. Many of them were of Mommy and then she had lots of the window as she tried to get pictures of outside. It was cute. She doesn't get that she has to aim the camera and she puts it up to her face, facing herself so there were several pictures of a smooshed nose.So the last thing I wanted to talk about was the Guest Assistance Pass we used at Disney. This made the trip for us and I could not imagine the very different experience we might have had without it. On the first day we waited in line for Tinkerbell, and Daddy waited in like for Rapunzel, these lines were short compared to later days and the wait in many of the ride lines. Also on the first day it was relatively cool still, overcast and we waited in line in a shady area for those two character meets. That said, Holly was quite a little terror, sitting still was extremely difficult for her, and the heat was super agitating. Also you are not allowed regularly to take stroller's in line with you, and without the stroller it would have been a total nightmare.
So the Guest Assistance Pass is for Guests with Special needs. the most obvious would be someone in a wheel chair, but because that is obvious they don't always need our pass. For guests without visible disabilities or issues you can get this pass from Guest Services. In our case I had my doctor write me a note stating her diagnosis of Fragile X, but according to the websites the note is not required, just makes it easier.They asked me to describe her issues, Attention, Waiting, Sitting Still, Sensory issues, Anxiety with noise and crowds, and heat and light sensitivity were a few. if we had seen any of the shows this would have allowed us preferred seating in the front right before the show would start and access to an exit, but we decided not to risk it this trip. It also allowed us to access rides through the accessible entrance or in some cases the fast pass entrance, and in other cases that access was through the exit of the ride.
In most cases we would go to this entrance and either one other family or no one in front of us. We would be greeted and then have to wait one cycle of the ride, so if they were loading the ride or it was going we would be on the next 1-2 ride revolutions. Typically our wait was 5 at most 10 minutes and we were in a shaded, not crowded area where Holly would not be disruptive. Then we were able to board the ride. In many situations the actual ride wait was hot, cramped and a wait of at least 45 minutes. While this is not designed to "Cut" the lines, I felt like it made our experience doable.
I feel like without this, not only would we have been able to do maybe 25% of what we did, Holly would have been miserable and spent much of her time wanting to go home, I don't think we would have lasted the heat of the second and third day, and our trip would not have been successful. This also allow us to push Holly a little bit and try things. In one occasion I rode a ride first to see what it was like and then decided not to take Holly onto it. Also it would have allowed Joel and I to take turns riding each one waiting with Holly while the other rode, if we actually went on any of the grown up rides together.
Finally Kathy was pregnant, so I think this helped her out a lot with the limiting of the amount of standing we had to do. I highly recommend this pass for anyone who has a child with special needs. Disney itself is overwhelming, scary, and a sensory explosion. Any opportunity to minimize possible negative moments makes the trip all the better. Holly simply does not have the patience of other kids, the tolerance, or the impulse control to handle long lines. Also the pass allowed us to bring the stroller with us where ever we needed to which was nice, she had a safe place to hide when she needed one.
So I decided to treat everyone with an early post about the Pumpkin Patch. We went this past Saturday and had a lot of fun. I figured that you already saw the cool Pumpkin and Animal Pictures so now you get a chance to hear the whole story.
We were late, of course, only about 45 minutes but our excuse is that this particular Pumpkin patch was all the way in Livermore, so it took us about 45 minutes to get there. Both Joel and Kat were about grumpy about being drug out early on Saturday morning, but their tune soon changed.
This is the picture just before Joel's "Perfect" shot. Holly running off into the patch, surrounded by little baby pumpkins. When Joel got the shot he was so proud, showed us and jokingly said, "Ok, we can go now!'
I don't blame him, it was hot and dusty, but everyone was starting to get a little excited, seeing Holly having so much fun running around. There were a lot of cool little things you could do there like riding the hay horse.
We were meeting many of our friends there but the farm was big and we didn't find them right away. We took a lot of breaks because it was really warm outside and we wanted to be sure not to get dehydrated. 
We gave Chloe's parents a call to find out where we could meet them and continued exploring. The patch was huge and there was plenty of space to run around. You can see the neat corn sign ahead, they had them all over for fun pictures.
This is another amazing shot Joel took of the pumpkins. There were lots of opportunities to be very artistic with our photography. It was a fun backdrop for a fun playdate. Lots of neat little things everywhere we turned.
This was a fun height chart, perhaps for the kiddlets, maybe for the pumpkins, it wasn't super accurate but it was a neat picture. After exploring we headed over towards the animals.
We stopped to watch the pony rides for a few minutes, but the line was really long and I wasn't sure if Holly would have fun or not. I am allergic to horses so even though they would let me walk with her, I wasn't sure my nose could handle it.
We saw the animals for a few minutes and planned on heading back and then walked around with Chloe to find Satine's parents. We found them having a snack and while we chatted the girls ran off to play.
There were a bunch of wagons and wheel barrows for people to use to lug around there huge pumpkins. Holly liked the wagon and saw this one sitting there, so she decided to help them out and started pushing it across the lawn.
She was making friends where ever she went and had a lot of fun finding all kinds of things to get into trouble with. She even went up to one of the exhibits and tried to climb inside it. Things like wired fences are no match for her.
After our snack we decided to go on a hay ride, while it is certainly not a train, and it wasn't being pulled by horses it was still a lot of fun. Holly likes taking rides, I think in part because she gets to sit on my lap and move around while she is also going.
We sat with Chloe and Satine, whom all had a lot of fun. This is Satine with her Daddy whom we just met for the first time. He was really nice. It is always a lot of fun getting to play with the Dads. Joel decided to sit out of the hayride, he was feeling dehydrated and wanted to take a little rest.
Here is Holly with her Tanta Kat behaving like a good girl. Our wagon was being pulled by a tractor and we were sitting near the rear so there was no door to close off the back where we climbed in.
Holly did eventually try to get up and explore but it wasn't all that safe for her to walk around plus it was really hard to balance, so she mostly stayed with us and climbed in our laps and looked over the side.
I love this Family picture of Eric, Katherine, and Chloe. She had asked Sandrine to snap a shot of the three of them together and I was able to take a few from my vantage point while they were in position.
Holly was getting really hot and she drank half of Kat's water and then started in on her juice. She is getting to be really good with the sippy cup, and on this day got a lot of practice.
We drove by a corn maze, which Chloe and her family explored later in the day. We decided to pass and wait until Holly was old enough to navigate the maze herself. They reported back that it was indeed a little bit of a challenge and a lot of fun.
They also did have a "little car/train" ride for the kids, but they had to each be smaller then 80 lbs and sit individually in the cars, so the girls were all too little to do that. They were very curious though when they saw it as we rode by.
Earlier in the day Felicia and Thatcher were in attendance but they had arrived early and left just before we came. They had fun, but it was getting hot for them too, and Thatcher was getting cranky.
Kassandra and Magnus were also supposed to be in attendance, I called on them to check but it went strait to voicemail. She had told me earlier int he week that they were going to breakfast and would be early, so we assumed we missed them too.
Holly finally broke free and we let her sit on the floor of the wagon. She was very curious about the hay and wanted to pick it up and look at it. Surprisingly she was really good and did not try and eat it.
Here is Chloe and her daddy taking in one last look of the scenery before we all hopped off of the wagon and our ride was ended. Chloe looked excited about the maze. We had heard there was a shorter hay maze for the little ones, but when I asked they said there wasn't.
Here is little miss Holly. Her daddy missed her so and came to greet us and whisk her off the back of the wagon. You can tell she is already looking pretty tired here, but we still wanted to go and feed the animals.
Here Kat is filling up the water bottle that Holly scarfed down earlier. They had these old time wells, Kat said it was just like getting water on Little House On The Prairie.
Again to our surprise, Holly did really well with the animals. She was happy to see them and reach in through the fence towards them and not afraid at all. She liked the goats and tried to pet them on her own.
They were really friendly and she was very curious about them. They all came right up to her and were eager to get attention, although I suppose they were looking for food, which we eventually gave them.
For a quarter you could get a cup full of pellets, they didn't really last long. Kat fed them a hand full while Holly watched, she did Ok, so then Kat put a few pieces of food in her hand and helped her hold it out for the goats to eat.
She did really good and wasn't afraid at all, but then they tried to lick her hand and she needed to take a mommy moment to recover from the brave thing she just did and recharge a bit.
So of course Mommy heard her loud and clear and picked her right up and told her how brave she was and how fun it was to feed all of the animals. Tanta Kat continued to feed them, I think in all we got 3-4 cups of food for them.
After her break she watched from afar again holding onto Mommy's leg, but eventually her curiosity got the best of her and she was eager to try feeding them again.
She needed help to keep her hand flat and steady, and of course mommy silently worried about her getting bitten, but assumed if all these kids came through the petting zoo unscathed, she would probably be alright to.
She fed them again and then ran off to the next area where the Chickens lived. Well she really liked them, she must have been able to speak there language as she was so verbal, she was telling them a story and squeaking and squawking every which way,
You couldn't really pet the chickens very well and the fence had much tighter weave and you couldn't really feed them as they would peck your palms even if you could get then through the fence, so we bought them a cup of there feed and then splashed it on the ground.
They all came swarming, which she quite enjoyed. She giggled and laughed as she watched them eat up the food. This was a little wheel Barrow left behind and Holly decided she wanted to push it. 
Rather then risk her getting hurt I decided to give her a little ride as we headed back to meet Chloe again. She quite enjoyed it and it ended up being less work then carrying her. But on the other hand...
Joel was convinced she would get tetanus from the rust and totally did not want her in the barrow and was sorta trying to get me to take her out. He ended up washing her hands and even the little pumpkin she was playing with in hand sanitizer foam.
She did need to wash them though, after touching the animals. We met up with Chloe and Holly immediately ran up and tried to free her from the stroller. She leaned in and gave her a little kiss to, which was so adorable.
Then she grabbed for the center button and kept trying to push it so the latches would open. She knew how to do it, but didn;t have the finger pushing stregth to get it to work. Chloe was tired form the maze anyways and not ready to climb out yet.
We headed back to the Pumkin Patch for one last visit before heading home. katherine hadn;t gotten the "Magic" shot of Chloe in the pumpkins yet, she always managedto turn her head just beofre the camera would click, so we decided to try again.
I think I got some really good posts of both Holly and Chloe playing in the pumpkins, I posted them earlier. it was a loot of fun to chase after them trying to get the pictures, and then later looking back through them.
But as you can see, there were still lots of shots when they weren;t all looking at the camera, you have to take 100 to get that one perfect shot. Trust me, I did. Just before we were heading out Khan and gabriel and his Auntie and Daddy found us and joined us. The girls all ran up to gabriel and swarmed, when he arrived.
I thought the pictures of Chloe trying to hold his hand were adorable. Holly tried to give hima hug, and then she was intrigued by the clips of his suspenders. He loved the pumkins and his adults reported that he had spent the last hour climbing all over them.
It was time to say good bye, all of the kids were starting to look sleepy and pretty worn out, it was a very active day and most of the time Holly was walking around the whole place on her own.
I was sure she would pass out int he car as soon as we hit the highway, but that was not the case. She was just actually ready to go, and hot and dehydrated. She drank the rest of her juice, some more water and some of Mommy's Jamba Juice all in the car on the way home.
She even munched down a snack, but alas she just needed a break and she never fell asleep, I tried to put her down for a nap when we got home, we had been out for several hours, but still a no go. She ended up staying awake until 6:00 PM. She finally fell asleep just after, thank goodness, as Joel and I were headed out the door for a dinner and movie date night.
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