This is Us

Disneyland Trip Last Day

Our last full day in California, we went to the beach and to an Angels game.

It was pretty foggy, and the water was cold (as it always is in California,) but that didn't keep anyone from enjoying themselves.

I'm pretty sure my kids could play in the sand all day.

...And I will join them.

Jake and Kami found an area with fish, and they gave turns showing all the kids.

The Angels game was beautiful weather and there was no one there, so we moved down to sit closer. It was a fun game to watch with (3?) home runs. Just a good day for baseball.

I took a picture after we got home of Meili's shirt all signed. She and Grant both wore their shirts on their first day back to school.

This is the truck that Grant bought for his souvenir. As soon as he saw this truck, I knew there was no reason to keep looking, because he was going to buy this truck.

And while we were gone, Cam was well taken care of. I'll be honest, most of the time we were gone, I was just counting my blessings that he wasn't with us. We love this little boy so much, but he would have been a disaster on this particular trip. My mom and Emily sent us regular updates, so we knew things were going well on the homefront. But I had no idea how anxious I would be to see him. From the moment we got off the airplane in Salt Lake, my heart started racing and as soon as I saw him, I started bawling. No idea why. You'd think it had been years since I had seen him, or that he was in serious danger. But, nope, I just sobbed like a baby after not holding my baby for a week.

Luckily all the updates we got throughout the week were positive. He slept well all but one night, he didn't miss us too much, and they worked on growing his belly :)

After going to Disneyland (again-it's been awhile,) I can definitely see what all the fuss is about. There really is some magic there. Josh and I were impressed with how clean it was. We momentarily lost a few kids (in the family, not ours) and the staff was so helpful and responsive, and as I said, the detail is extraordinary. But it's always good to go on a trip, where you enjoy yourselves, but when it's over, you're ready to come home. Now we'll see how long it takes for our kids to not ask us everyday when we're going back.

Disneyland Day 4

By Thursday, we had pretty much done everything we wanted to, so Thursday was a day to tie up loose ends, go on a few of our favorites over again, and take it all in.

On the Radiator Springs ride, we couldn't convince Grant to go, and Meili got the most wet. We asked her how she felt about being so wet (since Grant was not so happy about it,) and this was her reaction. Grant and Meili are opposite in pretty much every way.

We did a couple of the rides at California Adventure and went on the Cars ride again since we loved it so much the first time. On Thursday, it started getting a lot more crowded and the lines got a lot longer. So it was a good thing we had already gotten most things in.

We were finally able to meet Mickey! I told Josh early in the week, that he was the only character that I felt like we HAD to meet, and he ended up being the one we had to put the most effort into meeting.

I still could have spent more time in Toon Town, but we had to make a lunch reservation.

We let the kids explore the little island over by the New Orleans area. I think they were glad to just feel a little freedom rather than standing in line or racing from one ride to another.

Then we went to a play of Frozen. I was really glad we did. The kids got a little break, the play was better than I expected, and we felt refreshed enough to keep going without having to go back to the hotel and waste time going back and forth.

Then Meili and I took a little drawing class in California Adventure, while Josh and Grant went to an interactive movie about the sea. That was fun too! If we had known about it earlier on, I think Meili and I would have done another one.

When Josh and I talked about the rides we wanted to go on again the most, I said the Cars ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Haunted Mansion. Luckily we got those all in. I thought the Haunted Mansion was awesome because it was all decorated in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme for Halloween. It's amazing all the time and effort that is put into every detail at Disneyland.

And somehow, we convinced Grant to go on it again, even though he was definitely done with all things scary by the end of the trip.

The good news is: by the time we were done with Disneyland, our whole family was ready to be done. But no matter what, leaving Disneyland is always a little bit sad.

Josh and I took several pictures of our kids sleeping throughout the week. They were so tired, and it was crazy to see all the different positions they ended up in when they were sharing a bed.

Disneyland Day 3

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?)