For Christmas this year, I decided it was a good idea to make an escape from this dreary climate for a few days. Last week I surprised Andrea and Charlie with a little trip to "The Happiest Place On Earth"®. Now, I may be off the rocker here, but to me happiness does not involve waiting in hours of lines, spending far too much on admission and brilliantly marketed tschotchke, or fighting for the last stroller-parking spot. Whatever.

The flight into John Wayne Airport was Charlie’s first plane ride and, for the most part, he did pretty well. It wasn’t until just after the seat belt light was extinguished that he decided he no longer wanted to be strapped to his parents. I got up and took him to the back of the plane to try to occupy him with random flight-attendant gear and we ended up being stuck back there until the beverage cart made its way down the aisle. It was when I wouldn’t let him inflate the emergency escape slide that he lost his mind—I had to draw the line somewhere.

dramatization: us crossing the
Los Angeles River in our rental car.

To save ourselves the hassle of carrying too much crap through airport security, we decided to leave Charlie’s car seat at home and get one with our rental car. For anybody who has not learned this lesson already, bring your own car seat. We would have felt safer strapping Charlie directly to the back seat with duct tape than use what the rental company had to offer. Not that any other car on the road had a chance against the enormous hunk of metal that we ended up renting—the newly redesigned Dodge Charger…’awe-some!’ I thought as I slid across the hood and climbed in through the window.

This portion of “It’s a Small World”
brought to you by Taco Bell.

We spent 2.5 days park-jumping between Disneyland®, and California Adventure®, trying to ride and see everything we could. Charlie’s Grandma was nice enough to come down for a few days so we could go on some big-kid rides. Everything was decked out for the Holiday Season, although it was still hard to grasp the idea of Christmas in an ever-sunny climate. We made sure we rode "It’s a Small World" a couple of times, since we heard they’re closing it down for a while. Why is it closing, you ask? Ironically, because they have to make the ride’s river deeper—it’s a small world…with chubby inhabitants. Apparently they’ve started having problems with the boats bottoming out and getting stuck in the middle of the ride…no kidding. If that’s not a wake-up call for a serious nationwide diet plan, I’m not sure what is. Of course, it doesn’t help that across the park, there are several MacDonald’s® french-fry stands. That’s it…they sell fries at a premium price. I saw small herds of people munching on, what I calculated to be approximately $7,000 worth of deliciously fried potatoes—and if I had cash…and hadn’t just eaten two churros, I would have joined them.

he prefers short walks on the beach.

We took one day to drive down to the coast with every intention of having lunch at a nice café where we could sit with a view of the ocean and eat fresh seafood. Starving, frustrated, and not sure where we were going, we ended up at Fashion Island Mall’s food court…which, for a food court, ain’t that bad. From there we figured out how to get out to the Newport peninsula, where we let Charlie chase pigeons up and down Balboa Pier then strolled on the sandy beach for a while.

For our final evening, Andrea and I left Charlie with his grandma and went to dinner at Napa Rose at the Grand California Hotel. We sat at the chef’s counter, where the sous-chef personally took care of us and the kitchen staff put on an amazing show right in front of our eyes. I liked to pretend that we were judging an Iron Chef competition, except at the end, instead of asking us to critique their work, they just gave us a bill.

It was a quick trip, but a good one. Next time we go, hopefully Charlie will be old enough to get more out of a place like Disneyland®. At this point he couldn’t figure out why we kept taking his picture with large, scary, mutant animals. Shouldn’t be long, however, before he is programmed to worship the Disney® brand. ‘Must…buy…mouse…’