What We've Been Up To: Rainy Disney is Fun Disney

Friday, July 5, 2013

Rainy Disney is Fun Disney

Want to know the secret to a great day at Disneyland? Wait until it rains! Wear a raincoat and dress warm and you will walk on every ride without lines and get to meet all of the characters that you want. We got to experience such a day this spring. Here's a shot of Hubby and I snuggling up on Goofy's chair:

And here's the kiddos meeting Donald:

But my very favorite was when we met Minnie Mouse. My little ninja boy did NOT want her autograph in his autograph book and neither did he want to meet her, shake her hand, high five, or even be in the same picture with her. This is, I think, a classic case of "girls have cooties"-itis. But Ms. Mouse would not be deterred. She waltzed on over to him, and to his astonishment, took him in her arms and planted a series of loud S*W*A*Ks on him all over his face. I was beyond delighted with her gumption. Now there's a girl who knows what she likes when she sees it. Unfortunately for him though, we all now refer to her as his girlfriend, which he vehemently denies. The proof, as they say, is in the pictures...

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt