S'mores for Memorial Day

In the United States, today is Memorial Day, a day to remember the many men and women who have fought and died for our country.  It is also common to barbecue, have picnics, go to the beach, and generally celebrate the unofficial start of summer.

We're still a couple of weeks away from our next trip, but I wanted to share something fun you can do with the kids that won't cost much.  If you don't have a barbecue/grill because you live in an apartment, don't want one, can't afford one, or any other reason, I recently found this great video of someone making s'mores in an oven.  For those of you unfamiliar, a s'more consists of a roasted marshmallow, melted chocolate, and graham crackers.  It's every bit as bad for you as it sounds, but it's also a staple of the classic American summer.

I did a slight variation on this using my convection/toaster oven.  I set it to broil at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.  First, I toasted the bottom layer of graham cracker with just the chocolate on it for 1 minute.  Then, I added the marshmallows and added another 3 minutes of cook time (could have been 4 minutes if you want a darker marshmallow).  Finally, I topped them with another graham cracker and let the kids loose on them.  It was fun, delicious, and only cost about $4.  The marshmallows didn't catch fire the way they often do on a grill and the chocolate was much better melted than doing it the traditional way.

Street Fair

Today I took my children to our local street fair, put on by the city chamber of commerce.  It's an opportunity for people to see what services their community has to offer.  The event includes booths for various businesses and government agencies, candidates for political office, activities for kids, police cars, fire trucks, and garbage trucks for kids to explore, a small car show, live music, and food trucks.  The best part?  The event is free (though the kids' attractions cost a bit of money similar to a carnival).  My kids loved going to each of the booths and exploring.  This year, they moved it from the center of town to our local mall.  It was nice to have more space for everything, but I hope next year they have more volunteers for parking and crowd control, a more detailed map, better crowd flow, and possibly offsite parking with a shuttle as an option. 

If your town has something like this, it's worth going.  We had a lot of fun and the kids were kept entertained for hours.

Disneyland After Dark: Star Wars Nite

Last night, I had the pleasure of being able to ring in May the 4th with thousands of other rabid Star Wars/Disney fans at Disneyland After Dark.  This was a new offering at Disneyland to celebrate Star Wars Day, a popular moment in geek culture.  The event sold out within hours of going on sale and people were eager to see what there was to offer.  I was only able to get one ticket, so I went by myself.  While it would have been more fun with friends and/or family, there were plenty of people to talk to and generally a positive atmosphere.

First, I went to a panel where I got to see some of the head Imagineers discuss their roles in developing Batuu (aka Galaxy's Edge, aka Star Wars Land).  Unfortunately, I couldn't take videos or pictures because we had to seal our phones for this part of the event, but needless to say, it's going to be amazing to walk through the streets of a real Star Wars planet and come face to face with the Millennium Falcon.

There were many food offerings throughout the park.  I did not get to try many because I spent a good portion of the evening in line for other things, but Beru's special was delicious (blue milk with boba) as were the clone potatoes.  The offerings were whimsical and most people had a positive response to the food.

Merchandise was kind of a disaster.  There was a line from Starcade all the way through the normal queue for the Tomorrowland theater area.  I considered myself to be fairly close to the front of the line, but it still took 45 minutes to get through.  Unfortunately, this is where Disney fell short big time.  The lower level cast members did a great job with what little direction they were given.  However, the "ties" (you know, supervisor and up level) were all standing in a huddle laughing and chatting when they really should have been helping out.  At one point, myself and the people around me were helping direct traffic properly and one man that looked like a bouncer was shuffling people through who were cutting in line.  The people who exited Star Tours were not forced to wait in line for the merchandise as the ride exit spits itself out in the store, so people waiting in the merchandise line were pretty frustrated.  I scored a May the 4th t-shirt, but honestly?  If I had known how little variety of merchandise they had, I would have skipped that part of the night.

There were many photo ops throughout the park.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any.  I was too busy trying to see the professional lightsaber duels and catch a glimpse of Captain Phasma and her troopers. 

Overall, it was a fun experience.  I am hoping they make this an annual event and that they manage to work out some of the kinks and start training their employees better so that when Star Wars Land opens, they don't have riots.  I will say, above all, it was sort of magical to see the park without it being packed wall to wall.  It's especially beautiful at night.

Here are some other pictures from earlier in the day before the event began.  It was a beautiful day and I couldn't resist taking some photographs.