Took this photo on the Finding Nemo submarine ride and kind of love it.
P.S. This ride is the most adorable thing ever, and yet made my 2-year-old scream like Linda Blair.
P.P.S. The spinning teacups - my own personal Ride From Hell - went over much better with her.
My latest family travel video is over on The Scenic Route
Now that my son has started kindergarten (! Granted, it's "transitional kindergarten," but STILL), I see a day in the not-so-distant future when we won't just be able to pack up and go whenever the mood strikes us. Very soon, we'll be beholden to school schedules and sports practices and et cetera et cetera, so we've been trying to take advantage of every opportunity to just haul off to wherever. Coming up we have a me-plus-kids trip to see Kendrick's family in Ohio, an all-four-of-us press trip to New Orleans, and a trip to Kentucky to meet with a client that I'm taking Indy on so we can get some just-us-two time.
Buuuuut I think you already know that one of my absolute favorite places to sneak off to for a few days is Los Angeles (specifically Francesca's couch in Los Angeles; thank you Francesca). Which is where I shot this video about some of the ways we make all this travel happen - which includes accidental cameos from everyone mentioned in this post (because that's what happens when you film videos at your best friend's dining room table; thank you Francesca).
We're going to Disneyland in a few days - the trip is Kendrick's birthday present - and I need help please, because my head is full of visions of panicking, overheated children who must sit on our shoulders and/or heads in four-hour-long lines and who end up eating so much cotton candy that, in the throes of a madcap sugar high, they end up physically levitating off of the It's A Small World ride. I'm also picturing accidentally parking on the Disney equivalent of Mars, and ending up accidentally boarding a shuttle that just goes around and around and around and eventually lets us off at, like, the airport. And fifty-dollar hot dogs; picturing lots of those.
I am SO EXCITED about this trip, in case that wasn't clear from my first paragraph. Kendrick's never been to Disneyland; I've only been as a four-year-old (which I don't remember) and as a jaded adult, and I'm dying at the idea of watching Indy and Goldie experience it for the first time. (Indy has heard tell of some show where you get to actually use the - real! actual! - Force, and is freaking out about it, and my daughter, when asked if she'd like to meet Princess Aurora, declared, "No. I'M Princess Aurora." Okay, then.)
For the purposes of this post we're going to go ahead and abandon all reason and practicality. 'Kay?
Glad we're clear on that. So now let's please take a look at my fall wishlist.
That's a wrap on St. Louis!
I've spent a ton of time this summer with my cohost for the project I'm working on. Together we drag suitcases down hotel corridors, crawl into Suburbans for five seconds of sweet, sweet air conditioning, and commiserate over our mutual dislike of the straight-from-a-box scrambled eggs that hotel chains all over the country offer up in their "delicious! complimentary! breakfast bar!" We also talk and talk and talk, because that's what you do when you're hanging around on a set all day.
My cohost is more of a veteran of television work (and the associated travel schedule) than I am, so I've been picking his brain for hints about what life will look like should our project continue beyond this summer - basically, should our show get picked up for series and should neither of us get replaced (something I won't know for a couple of months at least). I ask question after question...but whenever I hear his descriptions of "life on the road" I feel my heart rate speed up. He talks about evenings spent perched on top of washing machines in Holiday Inn basements because you're fresh out of clean clothing. About waking up and not being entirely sure what city you're in. About weeks going by without a single glimpse of home. These words don't just "bum me out" - they put me into pure fight or flight mode.
