The day before Easter, I was moving at the speed of sound. In fact, I think I was propelled on a wave of whining as I moved around the house, laundering and packing and laundering and packing. The kids were impatient to have the big Disneyland departure day arrive, and the Easter Bunny's visit was yet another point to throw all their weight on.

Easter morning was cool and overcast. We loaded up the car with our potluck dishes for Easter brunch, and all of our luggage and miscellaneous crapola for the trip and headed to my parents' house. We visited, celebrated my oldest's birthday (again) with an ice cream cake, and then hit the road for the airport.

I missed the window to give the kids Benedryl before the flight, and figured that they would be fine. I was right, mostly.

Okay, flying United with a family sucked. This is one of those things that I'm sure child-free folk would point at and tell me how selfish and stupid I'm being, but I don't ever recall being on a flight where families with young children weren't allowed to pre-board. Since we were carrying our carseat onto the plane for our youngest, we were forced to thwap our way down the aisle, menacing all the previously seated passengers. Our request to have seats with our children met with blank stares and then eye rolling and huffing (they had all five of us scattered throughout the plane, rows apart.) When we pointed out that our children were 6, 4, and 2, and most likely a stranger wouldn't appreciate sitting next to a random child we were first told that "this is a full flight, ma'am." They were finally able to seat my husband with one child and me with the other two, but only after being told repeatedly that "the flight is full" and "we can't guarantee you will sit together."

Ahem.

After an uneventful hour-long flight, my youngest lost it as we descended to land. Lost. It. Big. Time. I held her in my arms and tried to coach her to yawn or chew but she just put her hands over her ears and wailed. The flight attendants demanded that she be returned to the car seat, and I managed to force her back under the straps and spent the next 10 minutes trying to keep her from popping a vein in her forehead and/or putting a size 6 rubber sole through the window or into the back of the passenger seated in front of her.

Fun!

Then we de-planed. And waited to claim our suitcases. And waited.

We had reached the witching hour, and boarded our Super Shuttle, which proceeded to make five stops before our hotel, and took us on an eye-opening and educational tour of the back streets of Compton. The trip from LAX to Anaheim took just under two hours. My youngest was not amused, once I ran out of Mentos. There was arching. There was scree-hee-hee-ching.

Even MORE fun! But, you know, Disneyland! Our spirits remained high, although I do believe we damaged the hearing of the less hearty folks on our shuttle van. Tra la la!

Still cheerful, if a bit bedraggled, we arrived at the hotel and checked in. The kids tried out the beds and crank-called the front desk and room service a few times before we got smart and unplugged it. Our youngest also put in an emergency page to the front desk from the elevator when her fingers located the pretty red button near the floor. We walked to a diner, had dinner, walked back to the hotel, bathed and pajamaed the kids, and collapsed en masse.