Day 2: California Adventure!

The kids woke up to some "Disneyland kits".

The idea was for them to carry their own stuff, ALL day. Not mom and dad. It actually worked REALLY great! Brinly needed help with her water bottle, but they wore their backpacks the entire time, and were able to take them on all the rides too.

Contents from inside the red bag:

water bottle: dollar store and silhouette fun!

m&M container: we gave them a little spending money, which they kept in here.

autograph book

light up ring: BEST purchase ever! Two for a dollar at the dollar store. We had lots of people ask us which booth we got them at. 

Glow sticks: dollar store

pez candy: for those occasional long lines. 

We're ready to go!

First ride was at Bug's land.

Tower of Terror. Dan went first with Brinly and Michael, then got a rider swap pass. This is basically a "fast pass" and lets on two riders. Chelsea and I went. She hated it. She had her eyes closed the entire time, but I thought that would make it worse, so I was trying to convince her to open her eyes. I'm NOT choking her. :) 

 I loved this set of Monster's University. They had a ride that took you through the storyline of Monster's Inc, but that's it. Supposedly they will be developing this section of the park along the monster's inc theme.

 Mater's Jamboree. This one looked like a lot of fun! I didn't end up making it on, but I heard it WAS fun!

The Little Mermaid ride. 

I actually loved this one. So did Tyler and Brinly. The shells are constantly moving, even when loading and unloading people, so there wasn't ANY line at all. I think I went on it about 8 times. It was a great one to go on with Tyler and Brinly while we waited for the older kids to go on an "older" ride. Tyler was dancing the entire time!

Goofy directing the musical water. :) I'm not sure what it was really called. 

 This was the Mickey Ferris Wheel. 

Yeah, this was BEFORE the ride started.

Here's a close up. We chose the cart that would slide along those rails as the wheel spun. It got us swinging pretty hard. One of the more scary rides, in my opinion!

The Merry-go-round. Notice Tyler enjoying himself?

This was the pixar parade. There were only 5 or 6 floats, but they were super fun. Brinly waved the entire time.

 

She didn't seem to notice she was the only one standing. I love it!

I though "Heimlich" was the hilarious!

We ran over to disneyland to watch Fantasmic, and Minnie was out! 

Brinly was such a trooper and walked the entire day. She just couldn't quite make the trip home and was passed out...on Dan's head...before we even crossed the street.

  That is what you call a fun day!

Meeting the characters

Before we left, I made the kid's autograph books to go in their "Disneyland kit". (More on that later)

They are just photo books so they can have the autograph on one side and their picture on the other. 

The clips were to hold the 4x6 card down for the character's. We quickly learned that the character's did NOT like the ribbon attached to the sharpee, so we abandoned that idea. 

Here are the kids and their books in action.

Brinly wore her "princess" dress over her clothes for the first hour at Disneyland, when she met most of the princesses. She was in complete "princess" mode as she walked down main street, holding her dress out with her fingers, and doing an occasional curtsey. I loved watching her meet all those princesses. This was the perfect time to go to Disneyland for her. FOr the most part, she got her own picture with the princesses, and then a group one. Chelsea was never into the princesses as much as Brinly, so I don't think she would have appreciated it as much if we had gone when she was 4. 

Anyway, here are the ones we met:

Pluto!

 Buzz light year!

 Minnie! 

(Michael and I got one with Minnie too, but I didn't have my camera out in time)

 Snow White

 Belle

 Cinderella

Aurora

Ariel

Miranda 

(She was my favorite, the way she interacted with the kids. She spoke with a scottish accent too, which was fun)

Jasmine and Alladin

Goofy

 Mickey!

Chip and Dale 

(I don't think my kids know these guys, but they are still cute!)

 Pinnochio

 Buzz...again! (I forgot we had already met him...)

The plastic army men from toy story. They had the kids do a training session. :)

Mater! 

(They must have had a guy inside because he was able to talk specifically to each kid)

 

Jesse

Jesse and Woody switched places before we were able to meet woody, but he gave all the kids still in line a high five. I barely managed to get my camera out to get this one. 

And Brinly's favorite: Sofia the first!

California trip, Day 1

California trip Day 1:

Our flight left at 6:00 AM, but the kiddo's did a great job getting up, dressed, and fed and we still made it on time. It helps to have a tiny airport with zero line to get through security!

We had a two hour layover in SLC. Tyler was very happy to get down a crawl around. Yup. On the nasty airport floor. But that's what soap is for, right?

We took a shuttle to our hotel. Chelsea was pooped, but the other two had enough energy to be silly throughout the ride. They passed out about 5 minutes before we got to our hotel.

We stayed at the Mariott Residence Inn,  in Anaheim. Our room had a little kitchen, and they even did grocery shopping for us while we were gone and put away the food! I'd heard about this service, but was pretty skeptical. It was advertised as "free" but I didn't know if that meant a $6  a gallon of milk "free".  Turned out, I could specify as much as I wanted, as in "cheapest milk" and that's what they got. I was super impressed with this service! They also had a super, hot breakfast buffet, so we pigged out for breakfast, and didn't need much for lunch, then ate back at our hotel. We saved a ton of money this way, not having to eat out or at the park.

As soon as we could find the swimsuits, we were off to the pool!

Great start to our vacation!