Now back to southern California...

Michael has been feeling better the last couple of days. He has been eating well, sleeping soundly and playing without any apparent pain. Let's hope that tomorrow's treatment doesn't awaken the nasty side effects again.

In the meantime, let's continue our Make-A-Wish trip with our Wednesday visits to Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure.

Again, we slept until Michael woke up naturally and then headed downstairs to have a light breakfast. Then we started the morning on the monorail on our way back to Disneyland for another day of sightseeing and fun.

Once inside the gates, we took the Disneyland Railroad back to where we had ended our day the night before...

New Orleans Square.

Our first stop was another ride on Pirates of the Caribbean (a favorite for all of us). Then after a stroll to check out the sights and sounds of this part of the park, we hopped aboard a raft for our journey to ...

The Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island.

Michael had a ball on the island - visiting with pirates and listening to music...

climbing in tree houses, scrambling across rope bridges and exploring in caves...

and just hanging out with his brother (and sister of course).

We decided not to go on Mark Twain's Riverboat...

Or the Sailing Ship Columbia. There was no shade on these rides and Michael seemed to feel a lot better if we kept him out of the direct sun as much as possible.

So, we took the train over to Fantasyland to spend a little time. We checked out some of Disneyland's original rides like the Mad Hatter Tea Party, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, Pinocchio's Daring Journey, Snow White's Scary Adventure (It's a Small World was closed for renovations) and...

King Arthur Carousel. After a while...

Michael took a little nap while the adults checked out some attractions that our little buddy wasn't interested in.

Then we grabbed a quick bite to eat. That's one of the best hot dogs in the world that Michael is eating.

He was feeling much better by this day so we were able to do and see a lot more than we had the previous two days. We rode the Disneyland Railroad to make our way around the park - there was a dinosaur display that Michael enjoyed seeing (again and again).

And after a trip on the Jungle Cruise, we said farewell to Disneyland.

BTW - you may have noticed the button Jenny is wearing in the picture above - we all wore those during our time at Disney's parks. They had a picture of Genie from Aladdin (Disney's Make-A-Wish ambassador) on them and identified us to park staff as a Make-A-Wish family.

And the blue lanyard around Brian's neck has souvenir pins on it. When we checked into our hotel, they gave Michael six plain pins that he could trade for better pins with any Disney cast member wearing a lanyard. He had fun trading the pins and then we purchased additional pins for all of our favorite rides. Now Michael has a nice keepsake that will always remind him (and us) of the fun we had.

After a short swim back at our hotel, we walked over to Disney's California Adventure one last time.

The first ride we came across was the the Grizzly River Run. This ride was awesome!! It is a white water raft ride that rises and drops, swirls and splashes. We were all soaking wet when we got off the ride but it was worth it. I think this was everyone's favorite ride of the entire week.

We checked out the parts of the park that we missed the day before. Like the Hollywood Pictures Backlot where we enjoyed the Monsters Inc. ride. Another section we hadn't explored was...

"a bug's land". This part of the park was so much fun. Everything was designed to look like you were a tiny bug surrounded by everyday human items. Like...

this bench that Jeff was resting on. It looked like it was made out of old, stained Popsicle sticks.

And the lights were provided by fireflies. There was a canopy of giant four leaf clovers that shaded you from the hot sun. And the "tent" over one of the rides looked like a giant umbrella (giant to a bug's viewpoint anyway). Even one of the rides was made of leaves and old, discarded food cartons. The creative genius in this section was amazing.

It was getting late and starting to get dark but the kids had a ball...


spinning and twirling in a friendly ladybug...

driving and...

and bumping in little caterpillars (to just name a few of the attractions).

We were still in "a bug's land" about ten minutes before the park closed and we all wanted to end our night with the Grizzly River Run one last time. So we made a mad dash from one side of the park to the other and were one of the last rafts to go out on an adventure that night. And we had even more fun than the first time!

After we got back to the hotel, we put Michael to bed and Jenny and Brian stayed with him while Jeff and I spent a little time back at Disneyland (which is open later than Disney's California Adventure). We just walked around, watched the fireworks and enjoyed the Fantasmic laser show. It was a relaxing end to an enjoyable day.

There are just two days of adventure left of our trip. Next time we will check out Legoland.

Keep your fingers crossed that Michael does well with chemo tomorrow. And, please keep him in your thoughts and prayers, JoAnne.