We had 4 days to spend at Disneyland and California Adventure, so we had plenty of time to explore, do our favorite things more than once, and enjoy the festive decorations. My pictures are a little mixed up, so at this point, I am just going to throw them at you :)
We started day 2 with the little kid rides in Fantasy Land. Sarah & Anne looked adorable in their coordinating stained glass Beauty and the Beast dresses.
Sarah had no interest in Dumbo, so we went on the carousel instead. Sarah was obsessed. We went on a lot of carousel rides after that. Luckily neither of the carousels ever had a line.
Mr. Toad's wild ride was a little too wild for Sarah.
The teacups were more her speed. Sarah and Anne wanted to go fast, so they went with Kelson.
We let Levi do the spinning in our cup. Let's just say it was nice and slow.
We went to Toon Town and explored Mickey's house while we waited to meet the big guy. I didn't remember much about Toon Town from previous visits, but it was so cute!
Sarah rode the little roller coaster in Toon Town with me, and she loved it.
Sitting in Mickey's chair
The 15 minute wait time turned out to be more like an hour, but Sarah was determined to meet Mickey. Sarah is the perfect age for enjoying all of the characters.
This is an excellent illustration of much of our trip. Sarah being a princess and Chris generally unhappy. His biggest problem was that we were constantly strapping him into a stroller. He got to have lots of snacks.
We ran into Pluto, and he invited Sarah to go for a walk with him. Sarah walked with him halfway across toon town without even looking twice at us.
We ate lunch at the Beauty and the Beast tavern and had to try the gray stuff. It was delicious!
She got to go for a walk with Tiana too!
Driving like a madwoman
Ferris wheel
Another carousel!
Dancing to the Mariachi band
Another ferris wheel ride-this time with Grandma & Anne
The Frozen show was really fun. Of course, I spent most of the show trying to control Chris and keep him from pulling the hair of everyone in front of us, and Sarah wet her pants on Kelson's lap right at the end, but other than that it was awesome.
Family shot with the Christmas tree at California Adventure
Sarah was begging to ride the monorail the whole time we were there, so we took half an hour to make her dreams come true. She was a happy girl.
A few curtsies from Rapunzel
We didn't realize until later that Sarah was hiding during the family photo in front of the castle.
Our last evening, we spent some time at Sleeping Beauty's castle. Sarah loved walking through the castle and seeing the Sleeping Beauty story. After I finished with going with her, she grabbed Kelson and took him through, telling him the whole story.
I just love my little princess.
The lights on Small World were amazing! They also did a light show where the lights changed in tune with music. It was awesome.
Riding the rockets with Daddy
Riding the Casey Junior train
Exploring Donald's house
One night, I left the kids home with Kelson while I went back to the park for another round of fireworks and a few rides with my parents, Katy, and Anne.
Getting our wiggles out at California adventure
Yet another carousel ride
On Friday, we randomly ran into one of Kelson's best friends from college and got to eat dinner with them. Small world!
The castle at night was so beautiful!
This trip was so exhaustingly fun for the kids that they had a rough time by the end of the day. The night we went to World of Color, we made a nest for Sarah on the back of our sit & stand stroller and she fell asleep right after the show. We had to prop her feet up on the bag strap so she wouldn't fall out. Sarah wanted to see the fireworks so bad that we decided to let her stay at the park the last night even though she was unbelievably tired. Fortunately she took a nap, slept through all of Fantasmic, and woke up just in time to end her Disney trip with fireworks behind the castle.
This was a magical trip, and we are so glad that we got to share it with all of our family.
On Saturday, we said farewell to our Hindman family and went to visit Kelson's family in Hemet. We got to see his Grandma, his uncles Bobby and Kevin, his Aunt Chandra, and several cousins. It was a great visit.
Everyone else drove home, but we opted to fly so we could get home faster and take less time off work. After our visit with Kelson's family, we hurried down to San Diego to catch our flight. The flight ended up being delayed, and we were at the airport for a couple of hours. The kids were great sports. The airline finally determined that our flight was so delayed that we wouldn't be able to make our connection in Oakland, so they put us up in a hotel in downtown San Diego for the night. We claimed our luggage, found a shuttle, and proceeded to the tiniest hotel room I have ever seen. Chris went right to sleep, but Sarah was up until midnight. We had let her nap thinking we would be on a plane super late. Oh well. Adventures. We ended up with $1000 in Southwest credit from the ordeal, so we felt okay about it.
The silver lining of getting stuck in San Diego (let's face it, there are worse places to be stuck) was that we got to spend Sunday morning with Kelson's sister, Pam, and her family. We hadn't thought we would have time to visit them, so that was a great blessing. We haven't seen them in several years, and it was wonderful to catch up. After a lovely morning at Pam's house, we finally made it on to a direct flight to Boise that afternoon and made it home safely. It was an exhausting week, but we loved it!
