On Wednesday evening we were going Trick-or-Treating, which meant a break from the park for the day. But we went to the Disneyland hotel for a character breakfast bright and early.
The one and only whole group shot we got on the whole trip. Maybe it's because it was such a feat to make this one happen.
It was fun to have the characters stop by our tables and get some one on one time without having to wait in line or being rushed. I was bummed, however, that Mickey wasn't there. I felt like that should have been a given!
The buffet had everything you could want for breakfast including hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and ice cream. Grant filled up on berries, sausage, and gummy worms.
We spent some time shopping at Downtown Disney. Meili and Grant worked hard the month before so they would have money to spend on souvenirs. Grant spent all his money the first day on a Mack Truck at Cars Land. But Meili still had money burning a hole in her pocket.
Grant found many things she could buy for him at the Lego store.
But we should have known nothing could compete with Build-A-Bear. But she was smart. She bought a less expensive bear, so she could buy two outfits for it. I hope some of financial teaching is wearing off on them somehow.
Giving her bear, Isabelle, a bath.
We went back to the hotel, swam, took a nap-(Grant and Josh, of course), and got our costumes on.
The Halloween party was a lot of fun. I know it was more expensive (I don't even know how much more, because Grayce bought the tickets), but it was one of the highlights of the park for our family. We trick-or-treated a little bit, but honestly, each person gave so much candy that we felt like we got so much so fast, that we didn't really focus on that. We did get to meet some characters a little bit easier, and since so many people were doing other things, we could go on whatever rides we wanted without waiting.
We debated our costumes A LOT. (Because that's what we do every year.) It was really important to me that we chose something that was Disney, since we would be dressing up at Disneyland. It was really important to me that we were all the same theme, because we've never been able to coordinate that, and it was really important to me that both Meili and Grant were equally excited about their costume. It was important to Josh that his costume was easy, he could wear it to work, and it was cheap. We chose Super Heroes (even though it wasn't Disney-but fit all the other criteria), then I decided I didn't want to because Jared and Amy's family were also being Super Heroes. So we debated some more, and a secret ballot, and 3 out of the 4 people in our family chose Super Heroes-so I conceded. When we went to buy costumes, they had am Optimus Prime costume for Grant, and I couldn't help myself. So we decided to bend the rules a little bit. (Transformers are Super Heroes, right?)
I liked the way all our costumes turned out. So mission accomplished, I guess!
We didn't spend nearly enough time in Toon Town before they kicked us out to prepare for the fireworks that night.
Grayce, apparently, also got us a photopass, which we didn't know about, and didn't use nearly as much as we should have.
The Halloween parade was also awesome, and by that time, most of the kids were DONE (as in falling asleep in strollers.)
