Two years today we were at Disneyland

Two years today we went to Disneyland in Southern California. As I'm certain you remember, we lived outside of Los Angeles until your mother moved you to Minnesota, and usually went to the theme park once a month (and sometimes almost every weekend!).

We had year-round passes so that we could park for free and get in on any day of the year. Usually we started at Disneyland and then when it got crowded after lunch went over the California Adventure.

In 2010, by far your favorite part of the park was Fantasyland with all of the kiddie cool rides. In fact, the photo I've included with this post shows us in Fantasyland while we were waiting to get on the It’s a Small World ride. You're explaining to someone how old you (It was your latest thing at the time!).

Here's a whole bunch of photos from our visit to the park that weekend.

Halloween 2011 at Disneyland

One year ago today we spent the day at Disneyland enjoying all of the Halloween sights and sounds!

Among the highlights was going through the Haunted House, which was decorated for "The Nightmare Before Christmas". The rest of the year, you never liked to go to the haunted house because it was too scary, but at Halloween you always loved it! I think "The Nightmare Before Christmas" stuff made it less scary.

The other big highlight was getting to meet Jack Skellington and Sally, characters from that movie. You wore a black T-shirt with skeleton bones on it, and Jack told you how much he liked your shirt!

You also got to meet Woody from "Toy Story" that day when we went over to his ranchhouse and colored some bat puppets! Later that evening, we drove back to my place in Encinitas.

Here's a photo album of our day at Disneyland!

Drawings found in my backpack

Was cleaning out my backpack - the one I used to carry all of our stuff in when we went on weekend trips after we gave up the stroller - and found some neat things of ours tucked in an interior pocket, both from our time at Disneyland last winter.

First were two puppet bats that we could color when we visited Woody's ranch house. They were both ones I colored - a Captain Kirk and a Mr. Spock bat! The wings are the colors of their uniforms and have their rank braids on the tips.

Second was a color picture you'd drawn there of the three stars in our cowboy adventures - Sheriff Jack, Lone Ranger and Bad Bart. They're stick figures, but I notice you colored Bad Bart in a black clothing. The picture is dated Feb. 5, 2012 (I always dated your pictures!); that would have been the Sunday before Jane came out to visit the first time (You met her later that week at Barnes and Noble and we spent a couple of days in Santa Clarita).

I need to get a new printer/scanner as my old one doesn't allow me to scan pictures into my laptop (my laptop's operating system is too advanced!), but rest assured, I have the items in a tote for you to look at one day!

Fireworks we've seen together in the past

Lat night was the Fourth of July fireworks, and I was very sad that we weren't able to be together for them. This was supposed to be my year to have you for the Fourth of July.

We've seen a couple of fireworks shows before - most notably the Halloween fireworks at Legoland in 2011; we also saw the New Years Eve fireworks on Dec. 31, 2011, but a fog rolling off the ocean made watching really difficult (remember how they gave us 3-D glasses to wear so that the fireworks would look like exploding Lego bricks?).

You always begged me to take you to the Disneyland fireworks, and I promised I would when you were older - the fireworks were late at night,  and I'd knew you'd be too sleepy to really enjoy them, plus getting out of the theme park is very difficult after the fireworks, making for an extremley long night for both of us. How I wished last night that I would have taken you to those fireworks at least once...

But don't worry, Kieran - we'll see lots of fireworks in the days ahead, I promise.

Places to show you in Wisconsin

I've arrived back in Wisconsin today, Kieran, so that I can better continue the legal battle to regain custody of you, to ensure you are protected, and so ensure that we can see one another again. While I will miss California and all we could do there - Disneyland any day we like, the ocean beach, Legoland, the mountains, the many aquariums and museums, the desert hikes, the festivals galore - so long as I am with you, it doesn't really matter where we are.

I always planned to take you back to the Midwest just to show you where I'd grown up but had hoped to wait until you were a little older so it all might be a little more meaningful. I grew up on three different farms in Wisconsin - one near Plum City, another near Elmwood, and the other close to Menomonie (this is where I spent most of my childhood, from second grade until I graduated fromhigh school, and is where your grandparents still live). I'd love to show you those places and the main streets and stores in Plum City and Durand and Menomonie where my parents shopped when I was a child, and to show you the "ancestral valley" where your great-great-great-great-great grandfather and his two brothers came to Wisconsin; they being among the first pioneers in the state. I want to show you where I went to school - elementary school in Elmwood and another in Knapp,  junior high and high school in Menomonie (yes, Jane went to school there, too), and on to college in River Falls. I'd like to show you the dorms I lived in during college and my first apartment in Red Wing, Minn. (where I held my first full-time job out of college, as a newspaper reporter covering Wisconsin news), and the newspapers I worked at in Red Wing and Prescott. I'd like to take you to all of the carnivals and festivals I went to as a little boy - the Durand Fun Fest and the Dunn County Fair and the Minnesota State Fair. I'd like to show you a thousand other places that I've been to and always wanted to go to but never did.

We will do all that and more one day. Don't be discouraged, my son - time is on our side.

Our Sunday breakfasts at Denny's

Ate breakfast at Denny's in Cedar City, Utah, Friday morning and had our favorite - the country fried steak and eggs. Remember when we used to eat Sunday breakfast at Denny's in Encinitas? We'd often split the country fried steak and eggs. You so loved the gravy! No matter how much I gave you, you always wanted more, too!

While waiting for the meal to come, we'd play together with some toys, usually something we'd purchased the day before at wherever we went (often it was Disneyland) or something we'd dug out one of the many totes of your toys I had in the storage shed. We usually had a waiter who also was a father of young kids, and even if we weren't at his table, he'd stop by to see where we'd been the day before and were going that day. You'd usually show him your new toys.

The last time we went there was in December 2011, just before I moved back to Palmdale/Lancaster. I remember you asking me, "Is that the last time we'll ever eat there, Dad?" and when I said "Probably it will be," you were so sad.

Well, I was sad that you weren't with me at breakfast today. One day, though, we'll be together again, and I've got a plate of country steak and eggs at Denny's with our name on it!

Fathers Day 2012, RIP

Unfortunatley, we weren't allowed to spend Father's Day with one another today. This is the second of five Father's Days in your life in which we were denied that; the other time was in June 2008 when your mother took you away the first time from me and the two of you lived with Grandma and Grandpa Bignell (my parents). At least you got to see your real grandfather that day.

We spent Father's Day 2011 at Disneyland. You participated in the Jedi Academy, we rode some of the rides in Fantasyland, went into Tarzan's Treehouse, and skipped on over to California Adventure top watch the Green Army Men band. We also got to watch a Beatles tribute band, Paperback Writer, perform at Downtown Disney. It truly was a great day; the only thing sad about it was that I had to bring you back to your mother's that evening, and for me the drive back to San Diego was unbearably long and lonely, as they always were.

I have since learned that Paperback Writer played at Downtown Disney on Father's Day 2012. Oh how I wish I could have taken you and Jane there so we could have watched it together as a family!

Rest assurred, Kieran, I am working night and day to be able to see you  again soon. Hopefully, we will get to spend Father's Day 2013 with one another. We'll be a long way from Disneyland, but I will find something fun for us, guaranteed!

Can't wait to show you some old westerns

Just before we were forced apart, Kieran, you'd taken a real interest in the Old West. You had cowboys and Indians play characters, a cowboy hat and pistol/rifle set we bought at Disneyland, and liked to visit the cowboy heritage museum in Los Angeles as well as Vasquez Rocks where some old westerns were filmed. This all comes back to me today because I'm spending the day with your grandpa and grandma, and grandpa is watching an old western ("The Rebel," I think) on television.

In March/April when I was moving Jane out to California to live with us, along the way I found a DVD with 150 old western TV shows, including "The Lone Ranger," on it.  You never got to see it as it was stuck in one of the many totes we never unpacked, but after Jane moved out, it fortunately was left behind. I can't wait to watch it with you when we are together again!