Roadtrip!

Short version:

We left Sunday morning and drove all the way to Disneyland. All I can say about that was if we didn't have the TV in the car I would have died. On Monday we actually went to the park and went on every ride we possibly could until the park closed, including the new tower of terror ride they put in (fun fun ride) and going to see their musical performance of Aladdin which was incredible. My new goal in life is to act on a stage as good as that one. The effects were awesome and the actors were good except for Aladdin and Jasmin not looking like they were supposed to( jasmine looked Chinese and Aladdin didn't fit his character), and they even rigged up a magic carpet from the ceiling right above the audience which made an awesome special effect. From the first scene I was longing to go backstage, let alone work back there. *sighs* yeah, anyways. . .
The rest of the week went pretty much the same way until Thursday, when we went to the beach with my Grandpa who lives just across the Mexico border. It was there that I discovered that I am in no way a California beach beauty. I have no idea how to surf, I'm fish-belly white (which soon changed to lobster red as I didn't put enough sun screen on) and I was surrounded by my younger siblings, so, rather than let that get to me, I built sand castles with Thomas, Miri, Samuel, Kyli and Daniel, went body surfing with Shelli and Kaiti (annoying all of the actual surfers in the process ^^;), saved Joseph from drowning as he tried to body surf as well, helped Miri and Kyli gather seashells (some with their occupants still attached), told Kaiti to put down the jellyfish that she had found before it bit her, fell asleep in the sun (which is the reason for my sunburn) tried to get all of the sand off of myself using the only shower available (which was in full sight of the freeway) and generally acted like a 5 year old for most of the day. ^^;
On Friday we went back to Disneyland and watched the Snow White musical they were putting on in their outdoor theater (which was another really nice theater). It wasn't near as good as the Aladdin one but still much better than plays I've seen elsewhere. We also watched a parade and I felt like we were part of it as most of the days we were at Disneyland my entire family was wearing matching shirts that my mom had made specifically for our family outings. It got pretty tiring listening to people ask my parents if all of these kids belonged to them, and hearing my dad respond "yeah, unless we lost a few of them" at which point he would go on to explain the Anti-Separation properties of matching shirts. We also got called everything from the Brady Bunch to the Vontrap family, which was kind of odd as both families have less kids than my family does, and had people continually point at us and count the number of matching shirts (I never thought that counting to 11 would be so hard for some people).
On Saturday we packed up our stuff and went down to Mexico to meet my Grandpa at his house so that we could spend the day together. We also found out that we were going to be going down to a water park in Tiaguana to celebrate my soon to be Aunt's 10th birthday. My siblings and I had known that my grandpa is getting re-married to a lady named Maggie, whom he had met in Mexico, but up until this point I had no idea she had any kids, but apparently she has 4 children ranging from the ages of about 8-14. After driving around the bumpy, heavily populated streets of tiawana for about an hour, My grandpa finally lead us down a small dirt road that he claimed would lead us to the water park. After driving down this road for about 5 minutes we find the road leads straight into a pool of water complete with garbage from the dump that was on our right, several rubber tires, and a couple of bony dogs prowling around the edge. It would have come as no surprise to me if this pool of water was the water park, and the tires were supposed to be the flotation devices (after all it was Mexico) but fortunately after driving through the water, the road on the other side did lead us to the actual water park. We then got out, put on our suits and joined my grandpa underneath a pavilion (complete with a palm thatched roof) where we were told to go ahead and swim until it was time to cut the cake. To top it all off we were the only Caucasians in the park and my mother had told us beforehand that we might be considered "fresh meat" to all of the Mexican boys at the park. Shelli and I thought she was only joking but were still slightly hesitant about going swimming as in Mexico the only purified water is for drinking and we knew the pool therefore wouldn't be. We finally consented and went down some of the slides (which are a lot faster than the ones we have here) only to discover that my mom was right and we had almost every guy in the park from the ages of 8-25 following us. One of the most avid of our followers was a little boy about ten years old, who had been following us acting as an interpreter, as the only one in my family who speaks Spanish is my dad, and very few people in the park spoke English. During the time we were swimming my mom asked Shelli and I to go out to the car to get something. We then headed out to the car only to be scared half out of out whits as the guy who was watching the parking lot had stationed himself right in-between our car and the next one (I though Shelli was going to have a heart attack After we'd had enough swimming, Shelli and I went over to where they were about ready to break open a couple of pinatas stuffed with Mexican candy. After both pinata were broken, Daniel came up to me and gave me a piece of candy, which I obligingly ate without looking at the label as I couldn't understand it. After popping it into my mouth I discovered that it was a strawberry candy covered in pepper powder. After swallowing it as soon as I could, I went over to my dad and showed him the wrapper of the candy only to learn the Spanish word for hot, while my mom had a good laugh when I told her the candy was covered in peppers. I was also told by my dad that Mexicans use spice on their candy just like we make our candy sour. So needless to say now I have a bunch of Mexican candy sitting by my computer uneaten. After the pinata episode we cut the cake, had presents and then left with a hearty "Adios amigos!" to all of the people at the party.

That's what I have typed up so far, I'll finish the rest later.