Lizzie's Birthday

As I stated in earlier posts, we went up to Universal Studios for Lizzie's 5th birthday. We headed up on Friday night (5/1/09) and arrived at the hotel around 10:00 or so. The drive up was uneventful except for the construction on the freeway exit we had to use, and closed roads to get to the hotel, but we made it there. The hotel was nice, we stayed at the Royal Pacific hotel on Universal's property. I noticed the "pet park" sign and wondered if we could have brought our dogs. We checked in and got to the room, which was comfortable enough, definitely a hotel I would stay at again.

On Saturday morning, Lizzie woke up and started opening the curtains because it was "morning time, and time to get up." We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and took the boat to Universal Studios. There was no crowd to speak of, which seemed odd for a Saturday, but considering the economy, and the swine flu, I guess people just decided to stay home. We were able to use our room key as an express pass, which made life a little more convenient, but if we had paid for it, I probably would have been upset, since there were really no lines anywhere. When we first arrived, I noticed the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit. The coaster looks phenomenal and I cannot wait to ride it. We did all of the rides the kids wanted to, including Jimmy Neutron, Shrek, and Disaster. During our walk around the park, my Mother called to let me know that the dogs got out and ran around the neighborhood for a little while, but the neighbors helped get them back. She said she just wasn't fast enough to get in the front door without letting them out. I said that we would just look for another option next time. After we finished Universal Studios, we went over to Islands of Adventure and rode Spider-Man, then we went back to the hotel so the kids could go swimming.

As the kids were swimming, I stayed in the room just to relax a little bit. While I was watching The Matrix, my phone rang, it was my mother calling. I asked her what happened now, did the dogs get out again? She said that Carsen was gone. I said gone? She said gone, gone. She had put them on the leash outside (there is afternoon shade based on how the house is set up) and left water out there for them. She left for a little bit, when she came back, she saw Carsen laying there motionless. We are still not sure what happened, whether he got into something when he was running aorund, the heat, or if he tried to get out of the leash. I had to go downstairs and tell Brenda. We didn't know what to do, but we didn't want to break it to the kids then, and ruin Lizzie's birthday, so we had to keep it from them the best we could.

We all got back to the room and got ready for dinner, I had made reservations for the character dinner at our hotel. The only characters were Shrek and Fiona (as a human). The waiter we had was really good, and got Lizzie a chocolate cake for her birthday, and was just all aorund very attentive.

Sunday morning, for Lizzie's actual birthday, we had the character breakfast inside Islands of Adventure. Brenda and I were still obviously torn up about Carsen, but, we had to try to have a good time so the kids would enjoy themselves without knowing. The breakfast was a small buffet, one item they had which was actually quite good was the green eggs and ham. I'm assuming it was eggs with food coloring, a slice of ham, cheese, on a bun. The characters that came to the table were Spider-Man, who oddly enough carried on a conversation with the table (you don't normally expect that out of characters), The cat in the hat, and thing 1 and thing 2. After breakfast we started on the rides, I went on Hulk while Brenda and the kids did the storm force accelatron . After that, we started towards Spider-Man but is was closed. We went to the water rides and I rode Dudley Do-Right where I lost my Dolphin hat, with Shane while Lizzie played in the water, then we all went on Popeye and Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges. After we were significantly soaked, we tried to talk the kids into going on Jurassic Park, Lizzie went, and I was stuck going on Dudley Do-Right again. We made our way around the rest of the park including doing both Fire and Ice on Dueling Dragons, and the whole Dr. Seuess area. We got back to the water ride area, and I was stuck doing Popeye with Lizzie 5 times in a row as Shane and Brenda did Dudley Do-Right again. We rode Spider-Man, then because I had to dry off, I did the Hulk two more times.

When we got back to the car, we had to break the terrible news to the kids. We hated ruining Lizzie's birthday, but it's the only thing we could do. Everyone cried for a few minutes, then we were on our way home. We are still deciding what to do next. Sandy seemed a bit depressed for the first day or two, but she seems ok now. We still want to get her another friend, but we need to find the time to actually go out and look.