After our first family experience at Disneyland, here are a few tips to help you and your family.

1. Midweek days (with the exception of holiday weeks) were noticeably less crowded.  We visited the parks on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and felt the Friday crowd was 3 times that of the prior two days.  Glad to have not experienced the weekend.

2. Help make your time more enjoyable by waiting less in lines.  There are several ways to do this.  *Go to the popular rides first and avoid the longer wait later.  *Use the Fastpass.  Certain rides allow you to take a ticket and return to the ride during a specified time and then go in a shorter line.  *Parent swap pass.  Most rides will let one parent wait in line and ride and then the second parent goes in the exit line with the specail pass and loads right away.  *Singles Line.  In an effort to keep seats full, the Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain rides offer a single’s pass that lets you to the front of the line to fill an empty seat.

3. Make your day with children enjoyable by planning for all their needs.  Bring a stroller for little ones to snooze.  Bring snacks and drinks to keep you energized.  You get the picture.

Well, we have been away for the last few days visiting “the happiest place on earth”… Disneyland.   This was the first visit for Ron and our children, and I had not been there since the early ’90s.  It is still a magical place full of wonder and surprises and this time I got to see that thru the eyes of our children.  Both of the kids loved the experience, the characters, the rides of which there are so many for their young ages and the magic of the place.  Just seeing their faces and hearing the excitement in their voices as they enjoyed these new experiences was worth the price of the ticket.  We got a 3 day park hopper pass with a spring speacial price and thus spent 2 days in Disneyland and 1 day in California Adventure.  The amazing thing about the rides is the experience that is created before you even get on the ride and the attention to detail along the way thru the ride.  In my opinion, the best adult rides were Indiana Jones and Hotel of Horror.  Our 4 year old loved the Subarmarine (Finding Nemo) and Autopia Car Racing rides.  Our 1 year old loved the carousel and Winnie the Pooh ride.  It was a great 3 days of fun.

While we were away, Squaw Valley had another spring storm dropping 8-12 inches of snow.  Larry reported the skiing was great, especially the upper mountain where it was deep enough to cover the hard pack underneath.  I believe this is the last weekend for Kt22 to be open, so get your last licks in while you can.

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For the past 8 years Lawrence Realty has sponsored a volleyball team for the local adult volleyball league.  Both Ron and I play on the team and enjoy the weekly night out for a bit of exercise and competitive fun.  This season we went thru league play undefeated and relished in the fun of winning.  Last night we had the playoffs.  First round was an fairly easy win for us and the finals put us up against our biggest competition who were second in league play.  It was a close 3 game match with scores of 26-24, 23-25 and 23-25.  After such a great season, we were a bit deflated as we took our first and only loss of the season.  Needless to say, plenty of fun was had over the last few months and our team will look forward to the fall season for redemption.

The snow has been falling lightly all day adding up on yesterdays snow.  The skiing is improving as each flake falls piling up and caking on to the firm snow underneath.  The report from Larry is… Granite Chief was great today and Chute 75 was just starting to fill in enough to be really good.  The snow is supposed to continue thru Friday and then it should be nice this weekend.