Two years ago today in Disneyland

Nov. 25, 2011, Disneyland

Two years today, we spent the day in Disneyland! It was the Friday after Thanksgiving.

The day before (on Thanksgiving), I'd driven all the way up from Encinitas to Palmdale to pick you up, and we enjoyed a meal at Marie Callenders in Moreno Valley before arriving at my place outside of San Diego for the evening. I had the turkey special, but you enjoyed a hamburger and fries!

The next morning, we drove up to Disneyland to enjoy it for the Christmas holidays. I think we stopped at Ruby's Diner in Carlsbad on the way up there, but I might have that mixed up with something else.

Anyways, I remember one of the highlights is that you were fascinated by the Disneyland Christmas tree. And the It's a Small World ride was decked out as well with Christmas decorations!

Here's a whole bunch of photos from our day!

Cowboys and Indians character toys

Do you remember the cowboys and Indians playset that you had in spring 2011? They were small and plastic like green Army guys.

You were really big into the Old West that winter/spring, so I picked up the toys at a trading post in Arizona when traveling cross country with Jane that spring. You and I had stopped at the same trading post a year before when we drove to New Mexico, and for some strange reason I remember the toy being there, so I just had to stop and pick them up for you!

If I recall correctly, I bought two sets - which made for a lot of cowboys and Indians! We had some great "battles" with them that spring!

Your Balok and puppet Star Trek figures

Do you remember your Balok and puppet action figure set? It was a Star Trek collection of three action figures, which included Captain Kirk, Balok, and his menacing-looking puppet.

I had purchased the set back in 1998 when there were tons of Star Trek toys out. I always liked to collect those from The Origianl Series.

I never opened it and kept it packed in totes in our garage at the green house in Lancaster, Calif. After you discovered that I had action figures/toys in the totes, you eventually came across the set!

Though I planned to collect the action figures, so many of them were produced that most were worth less than I paid for them, so I figured why not open 'em and let you play with them? After all, it gave us an extra Captain Kirk (We also got one with the shuttlecraft!)!

Your Obi-Wan 'Clone Wars' action figure

Another one of the Star Wars action figures that you really liked to play with when a preschooler was Obi-Wan Kenobi from "The Clone Wars" movies. I'm not certain what the appeal of that version of Obi-Wan was, though I suppose he looked a lot like that through the Clone Wars cartoons and in "Revenge of the Sith."

I always thought Obi-Wan in that movie looked like Jesus with his haircut, beard and robes!

I know we had the young Obi-Wan from "The Phantom Menace," and I'm fairly certain we had the Obi-Wan from "A New Hope" (my favorite version of him!), but when Obi-Wan was a part of our Star Wars adventures, the one from "The Clone Wars" movie is the one you grabbed!

Memories of my childhood football game

With your love of football, I've been looking for a great football game that we could play together. Most of them are fairly complicated, but I'm confident I'll find one that's just right for us!

Still, the games I have found definitely are better than the ones I grew up with! In the late 1970s, I got an "electronic" football game that consisted of a metal tray, painted to look like a football field, and then vibrated when plugged in and turned on. This caused the "players" (see picture at above right) to move. Each player sat on a plastic piece whose bottom could be adjusted to determine which way they moved when the board vibrated.

Of course, the game was impossible to play! Setting each player was extremely time consuming. In addition, any small dent in the board, or if the game wasn't sitting on an absolutely flat surface, meant the players didn't "vibrate" where they were supposed to!

Still, the games was kind of cool just to look at. My version of the game had the Denver Broncos playing the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XII.

Princess Leia action figure

Among your favorite toys growing up were Star Wars action figures. We easily collected close to a hundred (if not more) of them. In fact, it got to the point that we had purchased all of the ones available for sale at Wal-Mart/Target and so were reading up on what new ones were coming out and then looking through comic book stores for old ones "no longer available" for sale!

I was only able to bring a few of them with me when moving from California in 2012, so I tried to take the ones that you enjoyed the most. One of those I grabbed was Princess Leia from the planet Hoth scenes in "The Empire Strikes Back." I'm not sure why I took that one; perhaps because it was the best of the Princess Leia's that you had. I do recall, though, that we often set up the rebel base on Hoth and that this Princess Leia usually was in the command center (which the Bat Cave playset nicely doubled as!).

Two years ago today we were at Legoland!

In front of a Bioncle, Nov. 19, 2011

Two years ago today we spent the day at Legoland in Carlsbad, California!

We started our day with a trip to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas and from there headed on over to Legoland. I'm not sure why we went to the beach first, as we usually saved that for Sunday mornings. Perhaps Legoland wasn't quite opened yet or I wanted to save Sunday for another activity that required us to drive.

We spent a good hour or so doing the Aquazone ride over and over at Legoland! You also bravely went down the tall slide in the park's Egyptian section!

Here's a whole bunch of photos from our adventure!