By Shelby Cain
We’re back! If you missed my column a few weeks ago, we went down to Disneyland after some urging from a close friend and the collection of a significant amount of Air Miles. We’re still in recovery mode. It was crazy. And amazing. And did I mention crazy?
The odyssey began Monday morning with a trip to the Kalispell airport. The girls thought the plane was one of the rides and kept waiting for Mickey Mouse to emerge from the cockpit. He didn’t, thank God, but they were equally stoked when they both got their own cup of juice, with ice and some mini pretzels. We arrived in California and walked out to the sidewalk at the airport. The girls started jumping around, shrieking and stripping off their woolly layers of clothing like they were being swarmed by bees. A slick looking woman with dark sunglasses gave us a wide berth and mouthed the word “Canadians” to her equally slick companion. Yup. Canada’s in the house.
We took a taxi to the hotel. Another exhilarating experience in the mind of a four and five-year-old that left them wondering why the nice driver wasn’t going to join us the next day. Four is still upset we didn’t say goodbye to him before we left. She’s also upset she couldn’t bring home a snail she found and named Bob Lewis, but I digress. We threw our belongings into the hotel room, put on our bathing suits and raced to the outdoor pool. It was deserted. Dining staff at the restaurant nearby huddled under heat lamps in their sweaters and jackets, watching our cannonballs with utter fascination. At one point someone called out, “Y’all must be from Canada!” Is it that obvious?
The next day it was time for the big show. We arrived early. Because we’d purchased multi-day passes we qualified for Magic Morning, something I explained to the girls as an extra hour of fun for just a few special kids. At least, that’s what the brochure said. The crowd waiting to be let in for Magic Morning looked equivalent to the entire town of Fernie. Oops. My husband and I locked eyes, and a certain understanding passed between us. We would have to dig deep. Into our patience. Into our parenting skills. Into our wallets. The latter became clear when I pulled out a crisp twenty and went to acquire two coveted Frozen balloons, only to be denied because I didn’t have enough money. What? Once we ‘Let it go’, we were unstoppable. Like a family of California locals we dominated the rides, ate the giant ice creams, we even stopped apologizing to people who bumped into us. Most of the time. You can take the people out of Canada…