Our past vacations have tended to be a bit over-programmed, so we are working to not have too much scheduled.  On Day 2 of our vacation, the only thing we had scheduled was a magic show in the late afternoon.

Roly and I walked to breakfast at IHOP.  It was a small walk over there and on the way it started to snow a tiny bit.  Roly liked seeing the flakes come down, but nothing was sticking.  When we returned, the family got together to head over to the beach (of Lake Tahoe).  Toby had the idea that we would take a nice walk around a portion of the shoreline.  It turns out, at least in our area, that most of the beach access is restricted private property that we can’t walk on.  So we played football a bit and then drove over to explore the shops in Heavenly Village. The Sunday of a 4 day holiday weekend is not the best time to try to find parking here.  So we skipped the village and had a pretty good lunch at Red Hut Soda Fountain & Ice Cream Parlor.  After some down time, we *walked* back to Heavenly Village to see the magic show.  For one of the illusions, Toby volunteered herself and me to be onstage (the call out was for an old married couple).  The magician, Titou, put her wedding band into a sealed cup of Cup O’ Noodles that was inside a locked box that I was holding! Crazy.  It was an amazing show, and I would pay to see Titou again.

On the beach

Brrrr, cold

A good time

The magic!!

The trip from Carpinteria to Tahoe, via Sacramento, on Friday was super easy.  We flew Southwest Airlines out of Burbank, and loaded up the back airplane stairs, per usual.  I explained to Lucy and Ro that although we get our seats a bit faster by using the back stairs, since other airports don’t de-plane from the rear, we end up being some of the last to de-plane.  To my great surprise, Sacramento airport used 2 sets of stairs to de-plane.  Awesome!

We are staying at The Lodge At Lake Tahoe, in South Lake Tahoe.  We are about a 10 minute walk from Stateline, NV,  It is a bit strange, being in a place that doesn’t have any Christmas decorations in the rooms.  On Saturday, Roly and I needed to do some last minute shopping and other than that, we didn’t have any other plans.  So, inspired by one of the mini stories in Dragon’s Merry Christmas by Dav Pilkey, we got some art supplies and a bag of multi-colored candy, and decided to make our own Christmas decorations.  We made 2 Christmas wreaths, and 1 Christmas tree.  We used candy as the decorations for the tree and color in the wreaths.  Even Max jumped in to help out.

Tahoe Christmas decorations craft party

Very pleased with the results

Tahoe Christmas Decorations from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Down time day. The Theules had used up all the Disney ticket days, so the Bernards went to Epcot again for the early part of the day. For an early dinner we all went to the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue at Fort Wilderness Campgrounds. We had a great dinner and a great show. It was a good event with which to end the day and the vacation.

Hello Magic Kingdom. Toby had been watching the weather forecasts all week, and this was the day that was consistently listed as thunderstorms/showers. When we entered the park, it was a cloudy chilly day, but there was no rain. We did a bunch of rides with the Fast Passes and did some walk ons. We went over to the Snow White 7 Dwarves ride and saw that it was an 80 minute wait time, but we used our special Fast Passes to walk on, twice. Since this park has some really good kid stuff that only Roly would be interested in, Jan spent most of the day with the olders while Toby and I stayed with Roly. Roly got selected by Captain Jack Sparrow to be a pirate apprentice. We came together for meals but then split up again. At about 6p, it finally started to lightly rain. I went with Jan and the olders to Big Thunder Mountain while Toby took Roly to some more kids rides. On the way out of the park, Jan saw that the Country Bear Jamboree show was starting very soon, so we detoured. It was fun watching this ‘flashback’ show because it was a staple of every Disneyland trip as a kid.

Roly had pooped out very quickly, so Toby took him back to the resort. However, she had lost her room key and couldn’t get in with Roly. She was super tired but had to wait while we drove back from the park. It was not a good experience for her.