Dozer Days 2012

If you'll recall from last year's experience at Dozer Days, it was total-meltdown-heck less-than-ideal for a good portion of it. It was the last 1/2 hour or so that made up for all the hair-pulling frustration rest of the day!

This year went significantly better. We were a little bummed that Sean was not able to go with us - he had training for his summer job - so it was just me and Ethan. We bought our tickets early and then opted for the park-n-ride offered by C-Tran. SO GLAD I did that. It made parking and getting there a breeze! Last year we had to park a good 1/2 mile away and hike to the entrance along a busy, dusty road with no sidewalks. This year we parked at the bus station, paid a whopping $2 for me to ride (Ethan was free) and got dropped off just a short distance from the entrance. Win-win. Ethan also got a ticket for a free souvenir drawstring backpack. Win-win-win! It was Ethan's first time on a city bus, as he pointed out to me, and he was super excited to sit in the back with no car seat. Kinda like the first ride of the day at Disneyland is the tram ride to the entrance! Ha ha!!

The absolute, number-one thing that he wanted to do when we got there was this silly sand-digging thing. For some reason it really stuck out in his mind from last year, so it was stop #1!

Stop #2 was another favorite from last year - running the hydraulics on the garbage truck!

Stop #3 I didn't even remember from last year, but Ethan sure did! A "remote-control" dump truck. The kids really do control it, but it can only go so far forward or backward. That didn't matter to Ethan, though, he still loved it!

The rest of the day was also spent with Ethan directing us where to go - other than when we had to track down where to turn in the dang ticket for his souvenir bag. That took a while to find! He operated a big digger and a little digger, played in the sand, went through an obstacle course and climbed on a giant tire jungle gym.

So, while we avoided much of last year's frustrations (thanks to some careful pre-planning) we had just a couple new ones this year... We ran out of time to do everything Ethan wanted to do (some of the lines were killer!) and were booking it trying to catch the bus back to the station where our car was parked. We *barely* made it - but no thanks to Ethan deciding he had to go to the bathroom at the last minute and then thinking he was a foot taller and trying to use the urinal in the port-a-potty!! Agh!! There was a bit of an exchange of words between us - I was standing outside the door, but it wasn't locked and I thought I heard the toilet lid close so I peaked in to find him with pants around his ankles and pee down his leg. He continued to insist he had to use the urinal that he was WAY too short for. I made him sit down on the toilet part after wiping his leg and him telling me he still had to go! Then, the icing on the cake was going to wash our hands with the foot-stomping portable sink thing. Yeah, we both lathered up with soap only to find that the water came in at a trickle!! And after that whole fiasco we had to make a run for the last bus! Needless to say, a bath was the first order of business when we got home.

I didn't mention earlier, but we had also spent most of the morning cleaning and reorganizing Ethan's room. Add that to a busy afternoon at Dozer Days, a nice, warm bath and dinner and this is how I found Ethan - after we had put him to bed and were getting ready for bed ourselves. He told me in the morning he was waiting for the light to turn off because he knew we were still up watching TV! He just doesn't know that his door squeaks and I heard him get up and was actually waiting for him to try to snuggle in with us. We put him back in his own bed. :)