Disneyland Day 1

We spent weeks trying to prepare our kids for Disneyland, but I think they had no idea what they were in for. And since coming home, I've had a lot of people ask me if my kids were in heaven, or if they were on cloud nine. I'm not really sure how to answer that. They ask me everyday when we can go back, and (Meili especially) has a big smile in most of the pictures. But Disneyland is exhausting. They fell asleep the moment they laid down every night. They asked to be held and fought over who got to ride in the stroller every chance they got. There were a lot of rides that (Grant especially) said were scary or that he didn't want to go on again. I thought overall, we had a ton of fun, and made a lot of good memories, and came to appreciate our own home, and our everyday way of life a little more. So good things all around.

 

A couple days before we left, I decided I really wanted to make matching shirts for everyone. Since I was short on time, and money, I made them really simple: A Mickey outline with bleach. I stressed a lot about who would wear what color, and if everyone would like them, and two of the biggest reasons I decided to do them, was so that we could get a cute group picture at the entry to Disneyland, and the kids could use them to have characters sign them. And both of those things ended up bombing. Oh well, what can you do?

 Everyone was in such a rush to get in the park, that these are the closest things we got to a group shot. (And we learned that the characters won't sign a shirt that someone is wearing. So our kids took their shirts in the next 3 days, and still had characters sign them, but we were the only ones.)

 Our first rides was Splash Mountain, and Grant was in the very front. He got soaked-which he didn't love. From then on, he said he didn't want to go on Splash Mountain again, and he was pretty nervous about ride that involved water.

 I thought it was hilarious watching him walk around like this though! (And he dried off quickly-so all was well.)

 Winslow, Meili, and Gigi, spent the morning like this, and I couldn't get enough!

 Creating a game plan

 We busted out quite a few rides early in the morning, before the park got too crowded. I think the kids were grateful to have a little downtime on the boat.

 Meeting Moana

 Star Tours was one of the rides that Grant did not love the first time he went on it, but we took him a couple days later, and he said he did like it.

 Space Mountain was one of my favorite rides when I went to Disneyland when I was younger. Some elements had been changed for the Halloween season, and I did not love that :(
And I think Meili thought it was kind of scary because of that.

 When we went to ride on the teacups, Josh and Grant went and found a blue cup (obviously) and Meili and I were going to follow them, but she decided she wanted an orange cup. And it was a good thing!!! Alice and the Mad Hatter asked if they could ride with us-to which we said YES, of course!!!! (It was also a good thing Grant wasn't with us, because I don't think he necessarily would have loved that.)

 The parade was fabulous...

 Grant was not so happy when King Louie stopped by to say hi. I thought it was AWESOME!!!!

 Gaston was just as conceited and full of himself as he is in the movie!

 As much as Grant had mixed feelings about some of the other aspects of Disneyland, I think Cars Land was all he hoped for and more. It feels exactly like you're on Route 66.

 

 Because we were not willing to wait in line to see Lightning and Mater, we got these somewhat awkward pictures of them with other random people.

The first couple days we pushed the kids somewhat non-stop, and I think we were all tired because of it. The longer we stayed at Disneyland, the more we got the hang of taking it slow so we could soak it all in.

Disneyland Trip

About a year ago, Josh's sister-in-law, Grayce (who has been taking care of the accounting for Josh's brothers' honey business), proposed that the bee business pay for all the owners' families to go to Disneyland. Josh hasn't been paid from the bee business is about 10 years, so a free trip sounded good to me. And Grayce's knowledge of accounting made it a good financial decision for the business. So on Sunday the 24th we started our journey. Josh and I haven't been on a legitimate vacation for AWHILE, so I was beyond excited. We decided that Disneyland with Cam was going to be a nightmare. So we asked my mom and sister to take turns taking care of him during the week. And my mom, very nervously agreed.

 Meili was pretty young the last time she flew, and Grant has never flown on an airplane before. Our flight was SUPER early in the morning, and I tried to prep them for all the standing around waiting they were going to have to do in the next week.

 This picture is actually on the flight home. On the flight there, our family somehow got separated. I was bummed that I didn't get to sit right by my kids and see their reaction to flying, but they were in heaven sitting by cousins. Grant and Brayden had Transformers galore in their row, and Meili got to sit by William watching a movie.

 We waited at the rental car place for WAY too long, got some breakfast, and then made a quick stop at the LA temple.

 Then we went to a Dodgers game. (Note: after seeing these pictures, I realized the importance of beauty sleep, and make-up. But that's part of the memory-walking around LA in my pajamas totally "au naturel.")

 The game started out so blasted hot. And our kids were so tired and hungry, and hot. Once the shade got to our seats-less than an hour into the game, it became a lot more pleasant-as did our kids.

 We let our kids run around the bases after the game, which was fun, but we didn't get any pictures because they were shuffling the crowds of people through so fast.

 

 

 

 

 Josh rented our family and Jared's family a 12-passenger van for the week. We made fun of him, and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about driving and parking it in LA traffic, but it came quite in handy when we packed 16 of us in on Friday for the Angels game. And the kids loved riding in their party van together.

If it were up to Grant, we'd trade our van in for a 12 passenger van TODAY. 

Bear Lake

After the first week of school, before summer totally got away from us, Kami and I decided to take one last day trip to Bear Lake with her sister Bree. I always love Bear Lake, and my kids could play on the beach there for days, but this year, we never got up there, and I was so bummed. So I was super excited that we made this happen. And Bear Lake did not disappoint. We drove all the way to the North Beach and with the water so high this year, I started to question if they would even have sand to play. And there was. Just enough.

 Bree took each child for a ride on the paddle board. This was Grant's first time standing and paddling.

 Cam, of course, kept himself occupied trying to eat sand.

 Where there is Grant, there is a truck. Always.

 I finally got smart and brought this little bucket of water to where Cam could play in it. That kept him occupied for awhile.

 And Bree proved that she is a child whisperer. She worked with these boys to build this sand castle so hard, and even got them to pose for a picture before simultaneously destroying it. We all felt like that was quite the feat!