Am I about to complain about the Disney On Ice Worlds of Fantasy show? Um, yes. Yes, I so totally am. And let me preface it by saying that when we woke up on Sunday morning and were getting ready to go I was already blogging in my head about how wonderful it was going to be. I believe my opening sentence was going to be something along the lines of, “Today very well could have been the best day of Sam’s young life.” Because, you see, this show includes characters from Cars. I know, right? It’s perfect. It was the final act of our holiday extravaganza and one of our gifts to Sam.

And you know what, it could have been perfect. And it could have been one of the best days of his little three-year-old life. But it just wasn’t.

Like I said, we were all very positive going in. Sam asked lots of questions about what the show would be like - Would we be on the ice? Would Doc be there? Would Lightning win the race? And Hubby and I practically teared up every time we envisioned how happy he was going to be. And I’ll say up front, he did enjoy the show. But I think a huge part of that is that he was so overwhelmed by it that he hasn’t yet put together that some major elements were missing.

What elements, you ask? Well, where shall I begin?

The show was broken up into four story lines: Cars, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and a Tinker Bell story. The first three made up the first act, and the Tinker Bell thing was the whole second act. The show was nearly two hours. The Cars portion lasted, I’m going to say about 10 minutes because I’m feeling generous. While the other three portions had actual story lines and even somewhat followed summarized versions of the movies, the Cars part had absolutely no plot at all. Seriously, like none. They arrived . . . and they left.

The characters came in one by one, they drove around a bit to the Life is a Highway song, and then they drove out. There was no race at all. And I understand that logistically it’s going to be difficult to get little cars to drive fast on ice, but is there really no way to stage something at least resembling a race? They’re in a rink for goodness sake. Isn’t that an awful lot like a race track already? But no; no race, no plot, no nothing. So Sam’s question about whether or not Lightning would win the race? N/A. He was all smiles when Mater entered (he comes in first) and then when Lightning putted in with flames on each side, but even he asked if they were coming back again as soon as they left. And Hubby and I just looked at each other over his head like, was that really it?

There could not have been a race even if they had been in the show for more than 10 minutes because none of the other race cars were in it! Doc? Nope. The King? Uh-uh. Chick Hicks? Not even the semi-villain. No, they had Lightning, Sally, Mater, Flo and Ramone. That’s it. So the whole thing they were baking on was just the presence of the characters, and yet not all the major characters were in it.

This evening Sam was enacting for me “the Cars show we saw.” Would you like to know how it went? He would roll a car in and put it in a line, and then I was supposed to clap and say something like “Yay Lightning! Yay Sally” etc. That was it. See? I’m telling you they just drove in and out. There wasn’t even enough of a story that he could gleen anything from it to play when we got home.

Once I saw the second part - The Little Mermaid - and saw how much time was devoted to that and what clearly would be given to each of the other plots, I thought for sure they’d at least have the Cars characters come in between each plot line, but they didn’t. And then I thought for sure they’d at least have them come out at the very end, so we pushed Robby way past his naptime and dealt with his crankiness in order to wait it out in hopes that they’d drive out once more. But no. That Really. Was. It.

My disclaimer here is that we really were there solely for the Cars part of the show. Sam has not seen any of the other movies and therefore has little interest in them. He did enjoy the rest of the show and found the whole experience very interesting, I think, but I believe even he might realize how brief it was in comparison, as do many other children who were there bearing their Lightning McQueen shirts.

Speaking of which (and I can’t believe I’m actually complaining about this), but they didn’t even really have any Cars merchandise! They had all of these princess wands and glowey things, and all they had from Cars was a little stuffed Mater. The “boy version” of the glowey thing was a dragon with fire coming out of its mouth. What, they can’t work up some way for the glow part to be flames coming out of Lightning’s ass tailpipe? Come! On!

Seriously, I don’t know what happened here. The potential was so great. Finally Disney on Ice had a great opportunity to really engage boys, (and pardon my use of gender sterotyping, but you have to admit it is rare that boys are that into princesses) and they went ahead and billed it as though Cars had a major role in the show (because they knew that was how to attract the boys). If you look at images from the website and on the posters for the show, Lightning is nearly as big as Tinker Bell, and some of them don’t even include the Lion King at all, despite the fact that that portion was 30 minutes or so, at least. Based solely on posters and pictures, I would have said that the main emphasis was going to be split between the Cars story and the Tinker Bell one. And based on the press descriptions I read before purchasing the tickets, I might have said that Cars was going to be one of two predominant plots because that is always what came first.

It was based on this information that I purchased the tickets, which are NOT CHEAP, and chose to have our attendance at this show be Sam’s main Christmas gift. I think it was all very misleading. The fact of the matter is that the show started at 11:00am and we could have left at 11:15. And were he just a little bit older I think we’d have an extremely disappointed child on our hands. As it stands, I’ll be disappointed on his behalf.

I interrupt intense sessions of Guitar Hero, the viewing of the top 100 Best Hard Rock songs on VH-1, and the obsessive completion of our 2009 online budget plan to direct you to my post over at Philly Moms:

Alternate Title 1 - “My Sister-In-Law Wears Prada”

Alternate Title 2 - “Mommy’s Got a Brand New Bag”

Actual Title - “One Bag To Rule Them All”

It’s all much ado about something quite small, but really you must go read it so you can see how my husband can make a Lord of The Rings reference out of just about anything. He already compared my sweet potatoes to Mount Doom, remember? (see comment 1)

And when you’re done, tell me, how far would you go for “the perfect bag”? Are you still using a diaper bag, and do you long for the day you can put it in the closet? Or are you a shoe girl?

This is my first installment for the Total Mom Theme, Simplicity (please go here to see how you can participate - I’m pushing the date back to Saturday, January 10 for everyone due to holiday craziness).

I took these shortly after announcing the new theme and was struck by, well, the Simplicity of it: Two boys. Two pillows waiting for their cases. A whole morning of fun. Sometimes it really is the simple things, I suppose.

I know I haven’t been around. Has anyone? I feel like we bloggers have all been a bit absent lately, enjoying what we would refer to as “real life.” I have to admit I’ve been happy to indulge in this accidental blogging hiatus. I hope you all have been too. And here’s a lovely post from SouleMama that I think captures and expresses my feelings much more eloquently, so let me direct you here and encourage you all to continue to enjoy your family time. That’s my plan for the next few days as we ring in the new year.

And let me remind you to look for those wonderful moments of Simplicity - I have some saved up to share soon.

Hope you all are well.

I hope you are all have a beautiful, wonderful, happy holiday. We’ve driven around to see the lights. We’ve left out cookies. We’ve read ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Shhh…but Santa has already come tonight:)

Hubby is currently wrapping my gifts, which gives me a few moments to share this with you. We all remember “What’s that smell?” right? And then there was the equally impressive “What’s That Fmell?”

Well, it was said again tonight, on this fine Christmas Eve, and this time it was said by me: “What the hell is that smell?!”

Hubby likes marshmallows on his sweet potatoes. I tried to broil them for just a moment to brown them a bit (Yes, I have successfully made them before). What’s that fmell? That would be flaming yams. (Yes, they were actually flaming, as in on fire.)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

New post up over at Imperfect Parent all about the stiff competition I have going on with Santa. Totally light-hearted, but I’m sure someone will find a way to tell me how morally evil I am anyway . . . And I can honestly say today that I care not.

Amy from Occupation: Mommy made a great suggestion - two, actually - 1) that I either shut off my email alerts for comments over there and just not ever go and read them. Probably can’t force myself to do that. 2) Write stuff that is purposefully over the top and controversial just to get a strong reaction. I kind of like that one:)

And I now understand why we had the night we did recently, seeing as I now have a baby with snot dripping from his nose and who was up coughing all of last night. It’s totally my fault. I had the nerve to tell my parents a few days ago how Robby had never really been sick. Don’t ever do that. Seriously. I knew as soon as it was out of my mouth that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake.

I’m functioning on about two hours of sleep today. This is why kids can be very, very bad for control freaks like me. You can do everything right, so you think - not eat any chocolate all day, not let the nap go too long, make sure the temperature is right, not get too far past bedtime and have overly tired kids - and still, it just doesn’t matter. There are still nights where you find yourself sitting in bed at 3:00am with a 16 month old staring at you, wide-eyed and wide-awake. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it; it’s just not in your control. You can make no sense out of why it is happening and therefore cannot even ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

And then Sam started waking up with nightmares about “Captors,” which, apparently are like black cats that “are scary.” Huh. Not sure where that came from. And the two of them basically woke each other up for the rest of the night. Again, beyond my control.

Holiday Status Check: I’ll give myself a 95%. I still have two bags and two boxes of stuff to drop off at various donation sites. Oh, and during my fitted sleep I dreamt that Hubby had gone out and bought the gift I got for him and now I’m scared about that. Other than nagging him to write the few Christmas cards that are for his contacts, I think I’m done. Gifts are wrapped and hidden, cookies are baked, but half still need icing and decorations.

On that note, I think I’m going to turn into a Christmas Cookie. Probably the snowman, or snowwoman, as it were.

Oh, and I have no idea what I’m making for Christmas Eve dinner. What are you having?