Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

Today marked the 10th visit to Disneyland for Ms. Penny! My 7th. Mommy and Penny had to squeeze in one last weekday visit before going on our new work adventure next week. Today's memorable activity was a special screening of "Sleeping Beauty."  If you were an annual passholder today you had the opportunity to attend a special screening and stay 2 hours after the park closes.  I thought there would be a huge line for this so we drove down early. When I arrived at the front gate there didn't appear to be a ton of people. I got to enter the park at 930amand was one of the very first people in the park. I immediately booked it to the Opera House to register to get my wristband for the movie. I ran up to an employee to ask where the line was and he said I was the first person. I've never been the first person before! I got our wristbands and we had time to get in line for Mickey! What good luck!! We also visited with other characters before seeing the movie at 11am. T

Man, I was just getting into my mommy networking in my neighborhood and now I'm gonna miss all of the fun last minute play dates!  Here's a fun moment from today's impromptu meet up at the mini park. Penny's pals Olivia, Becky and Luna had fun pretending to serve leafs. 

There's only one boss in our house and I bet you can guess who that is!

I'm going back to work next week and once again my head is spinning! I am both excited at the new opportunity and sad at the same time. When I was laid off 4 months ago I was pulling my hair out. I didn't know what I would do. I didn't know if I would ever work again, as finding work in Hollywood can be the easiest thing and the most hardest thing. Additionally, after what I had just been through with my last situation, I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to work. Loosing one's job is an emotional roller coaster. It's like going through a death in a family. You really do get angry, you really do mourn a loss and hopefully, if you get over the resentment, you look to the future. It took me a few months to stop having bad dreams and let go of people who hurt me but I feel like with the new year, I found the courage to be open to new opportunities. This is the second time I have been laid off from a company. The first time I was just starting my career.

A new indoor playground and restaurant based on a very popular Century City location opened up at The Glendale Galleria. All of the moms in my mommy group have given it their thumbs up and several of us have purchased monthly memberships. Not only is this place bright and clean but is a great way to get some of that toddler energy out!  The food is pretty healthy and tasty to boot! We've been about five times now but our visit this past Thursday night was totally fun with face painting, bowling, parachute fun, and a cheesy magician!

Today's visit to Disneyland has to be one of my favorite visits. I'm not sure why but everything we did was just so much fun and magical! We meet Elsa and Anna from "Frozen" (aka the very first movie P saw in a movie theatre and loved!), P talked in length with Captain Hook and we met a trip of Princesses (Aurora, Ariel, and Cinderella). We went on a ton of rides in Fantasyland, took the big riverboat around Tom Sawyer's Island, ate churro's and popcorn, gobbled up our favorite beignets in New Orleans, had a tasty lunch at Pinnochio's house, and visited the petting zoo to visit P's goat friends. Not to mention, mom got offered a new job!  What a day it was! 

So we were at Disneyland walking through Sleeping Beauty's Castle when I got a call from my former boss, offering me a job. After 121 days of unemployment I am going back to the trenches of motion picture marketing. I start Feb 3rd. I am excited and sad at the same time. Excited to start a new adventure but sad to leave P. I think its going to be a lot harder than when I dropped her off at the daycare at 4 mos.

I don't know why but I am a list person. I have this little black book that I keep lists in and when I was working I kept project lists and "To Do" lists. I love the "Notes" app on my iPhone as I keep several lists there such as "Grocery Lists," "Things to Do With Kids Lists," and "Dim Sum Lists." My friend, Sandy keeps a running count of the number of hamburgers he eats at Bob's Big Boy each year (156 last year) which, I found interesting, so I decided to start keeping track of the number of times we have visited Disneyland this year. Since we have our annual passes and no restrictions nothing is stopping us from visiting. P is up to an impressive 9 visits in the least month! P = 9 Daddy = 8 Mommy= 6 The Breakdown for P's Visits: 1- P's 2nd Birthday, which was cut short due to vomiting from food posioning. 2- Mommy is sick so Daddy takes P to Disney. 3- We celebrate Daddy's Birthday 4- Mommy goes to

P's girl BFF is Olivia and her boy BFF is Logan. We met up with both of them at the new indoor playground at our mall on Martin Luther King Jr Day.

P=7 B=6 K=4 M=0 :(

Caught Penny singing along to Tangled in the car today. So weird to hear her sing!  All these firsts are amazing!

In Penny and I's attempt to visit all LA Museums on their free days, we visited the Gene Autry Museum today. I've passed this museum so many times but it hasn't really interested me, although I have wondered what was inside. Today we found out. Per their website "The Autry National Center is a history museum dedicated to exploring and sharing the stories, experiences, and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West. Located in Griffith Park, the Autry's collection of over 500,000 pieces of art and artifacts, which includes the collection of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, is one of the largest and most significant in the United States." It's not very big with two floors. It was decorated nicely and the displays were nice but I can't say I was that interested. They had some great interactive exhibits though. Penny played in a 1950's kitchen and had fun playing with the oven and refrigerator with other kids. She had fu

We were lucky to spend a month with Daddy over the holidays. His show ended right before Christmas and didn't start up again until mid-January. Penny and I decided to take Daddy to the California Science Center, one of the free museums we visited recently in our quest to visit all LA child friendly museums. The main point of attraction at the Science Center is of course, he space shuttle Endeavor but it has a lot of interactive exhibits that are interesting to experience.

I've been lucky enough to experience each of my nephews' and one niece's first Disney World/Land visits. We took Clayton to Walt DisneyWorld, then we took Will to Walt Disney World and later Disneyland, then with Lila to Disneyland and now, my youngest nephew, Jaxon has had his first Disney experience. For Christmas, YaYa and NoNo treated the family to two days at Disneyland! We even got to stay at Disney's Paradise Pier which we had never stayed at before. We ran into Pluto and it was so cute to see Jaxon mosey on up to see him. He had the biggest smile on his face. He and Penny had fun eating popcorn. I think between the two of them I spent $24 dollars on 6 tubs of popcorn! Well, us adults helped too! Clayton, hubby and I got to go to CarsLand and ride the very popular Radiator Springs Racers. By staying in the hotel we got to enter the park an hour early so we took advantage and headed to CarsLand. It still took us about 45 minutes to get through the line b