Disneyland!

I love my family. I love my friends. I love to travel. So it would make sense to travel with both my family AND my friends.  

Done and done.

In May (yes, 3 months ago), we met up with my best friend (a/k/a platonic life partner), Ashley, and her wonderful little family, in Los Angeles.  

We split up the drive and stayed one night with Casey's wonderful sister, Emily, in Las Vegas. We love spending time with her sweet little baby girl, Julietta! (And she adores Kennedy, of course.)

Once we arrived in Calfornia, Kennedy and the girls played themselves silly until they passed out.

The next morning- Disneyland!!  Ok. So Kennedy has been "over" princesses for a few year, now. She thinks that she is way too cool and too old to like princesses.  Well, that morning, she saw Ivy and Kaia wearing very darling princess dresses, and she started feeling sad that she didn't have one to wear.  Luckily, the girls had an extra white dress, and Kennedy decided to wear it and be Rapunzel for the day.  I loved seeing her tap into her inner little girl. :)

We went first thing in the morning, and the girls were able to dance with Alice and the Mad Hatter, all by themselves.

They of course met Merida. 

And hung out in Toon Town.

Chilled with my main man, Mickey.

We had some adult fun on Splash Mountain.

The girls posed as statues in their beautiful princess dresses.

They rode in the teacups. I avoided them because I don't like throwing up.

K tried to pull the sword out of the stone. She failed. I guess she's not the heir to the throne.

I guess Casey isn't, either.

 Before we left, we needed on final picture.  Ashley and I had been to Disneyland together once before, back when we were 14/15.  I'm taking you back to 1997.  (Don't you just love the tube socks? I sure do.)

We recreated the picture as best as we could remember.

 Close enough.

When we got back to the hotel, after some swimming, the girls played "Let's climb on Casey." It was fun for all.

There's a rule somewhere that you cannot be within 30 minutes of a beach and not go to the beach.  So of course we had to go.

And I'm getting sick of writing commentary.  So just enjoy the pictures.

We had such a great time! I am so glad Kennedy and the twins get along so well. She tells everyone they are either her sisters or her cousins, depending on the day. :)

We may have to make this an annual thing...

Dizneeland

So you'd think that by planning a surprise trip to Disneyland, your five year-old would not throw any fits, she wouldn't whine about anything, and she would be the most grateful little child you could ever imagine. Well stop thinking that. Because it is totally not how it works.

The first whine of the trip occurred when we informed her that she wasn't going to school because we had a surprise for her. She was sure that no surprise could ever possibly be as awesome as school.

And then apparently we joke around with her way too much, because she thought we were kidding when we told her we were going to Disneyland. But after she realized that we were actually serious, she and Kaden (our nephew) jumped and danced around the living room.

We had barely made it to Sandy (about 20 minutes into the drive) before she asked "How much longer?" I lost count of how many times that question was asked.

BUT. Aside from her crying while in line for Splash Mountain because she was afraid of the big hill, and her complete meltdown because she couldn't get her face painted for $15 a second time, and the many "Kaden won't let me [insert whatever here]!!"s, it was way fun. The kids really got along great, they rarely ever fought, and the weather was beautiful.

That is pretty much it for my narration. I will post some pictures, now (with brief captions). There are a lot of them. Sorry.

Here we are at the Lego store in Downtown Disney. Yes those are made out of real Legos. Yes I tried to take them apart. Yes they are glued together. No, I didn't get caught because I was discreet. Like a ninja.

Standing in front of the large fish tank while waiting to eat dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Yum.

Piggyback rides are fun. Kaden told me I had chubby buns so he couldn't give me a ride.

Next day we Disneylanded it up.

We told Kaden that if he could pull the sword out of the stone he could be the king of Disneyland. He couldn't do it.
They made their way through Tarzan's treehouse. And looked way cute.
Kaden showed us his monkey skills

Then of course we had to meet Mickey.

Justin, Kaden and Kennedy rode the Teacups. I didn't because I'm not a fan of vomiting.

It really bothers me that Jessie has no neck.
And while Justin and Kaden went on Splash Mountain (which Kennedy adamantly refused to ride a second time), we met some princesses.
Kennedy was SO excited. She thought she was in heaven.

And even more so when she got her face painted. Like a kitty. She meowed for the next 2 hours.
Next day: California Adventure
Ok- this is a new ride (I think) and it was awesome. It's the Toy Story ride and you get 3D glasses and you have these guns and you shoot things. It was pretty freaking awesome.
Bug land. I think that these two kids were the cutest kids in all of Anaheim.
We rode the bumper cars. They go about 0.0002 miles per hour.
And since we did everything we wanted to in California Adventure by about 1:00, and it was a GAWgeous day, we went to the beach.
They had a freaking blast. The water was like an enormous ice bucket, but the kids didn't seem to notice. Kennedy actually totally biffed it while running away from a huge wave. And we caught it on video. It was pretty hilarious. (She thinks so, too.) If I can upload it, I will post it on here.

After the beach, we ate at a yummy nearby Irish restaurant, where they colored pictures of leprechauns, rainbows and pots o' gold.
And after a delicious treat at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, we drove back to the hotel.
Last day. (holy crap this is long. Sorry.)

We met a few more characters:


And Kaden had his face painted (yes, this is where one of Kennedy's meltdowns happened) and then we rode a carousel.

Here's a tip- never go to Disneyland on a Friday evening. I think that the whole state of California was there. I was feeling extremely claustrophobic and then when the sudden urge to strangle everyone around me came on, we decided it was in everyone's best interest if we left.

So we went out to dinner.
Remember how I said Kennedy didn't like Splash Mountain? Well during dinner, Kaden asked her why that was (in blue), and she replied (in red):

And after a good night's sleep, the drive home:

Disneyland!

Ok, I know it's been forever. And my excuse is the same one everyone has: I've been busy. BUT I have something worth posting about- we went to Disneyland! Yes, it's true- we've finally been on a family vacation. It was fabulous! Since I am such a busy person (obviously, since I don't find time to update my blog regularly), I'm only going to post about the first 2 days... then when I have another spare moment, I'll tell you all about days 3 and 4. Get it? Got it. Good.

Day 1 (Feb. 23):

Our flight got in really early (7:00 a.m.), which sounded like a good idea at the time... but we soon realized that, after we ate breakfast and went to the beach, we were too tired to do much else. We checked into the hotel early and crashed for about 3 hours.


I love the ocean...

After our nap in our beautiful hotel, which was directly across the street from Disneyland (Kennedy was so excited that we were staying in a castle),

we walked over to Downtown Disney (located between Disneyland and California Adventure- no admission fee... just lots of shopping and such) to have some dinner and take a look around. It was raining and I wore very slippery flip-flops.


After lots of shopping and dining (and slipping), we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Day 2:

Disneyland! We arrived as soon as it opened (8:00 am). It was raining- but that was good, because, as you'll notice in some of the pictures, it was very empty! We were able to ride every ride we wanted to- as many times as we wanted. It actually cleared up by mid-afternoon and turned out to be a very beautiful day. And of course the sunshine brought more people.. but oh well. It was still fun.

We started out with buying ponchos, since we didn't want to have to carry around our big umbrella all day (and I made sure to wear non-slippery shoes this day). And who do we see? Pluto!


Then we made our way over Toon Town to take some silly pictures...(do you notice that there are NO people in the background of this picture???)

... and to visit Minnie's house... where we met Minnie, Goofy, Max-a-Million (whoever he is) and Mickey!

(we made sure to remove the poncho for the Mickey picture)
As we were wondering where to go next, we heard a band playing. And we saw Marry Poppins! We made our way into the circle- and Mary selected a couple of girls from the audience to come dance with her- and Kennedy was one of them! She was SO excited (for those of you who don't know, Mary Poppins is one of her very favorite movies)!



We took a few fun pictures... (we all tried so hard, but couldn't seem to get that sword out)
We rode as many rides as we could. Kennedy was fascinated by all of them, but said most of them were "scary." Yet, she was still a good sport and went on almost all of them twice without complaining. We also met many other people- she met Winnie the Pooh, Eyeore, Ariel, Jasmine & Aladdin. I just decided not to post all of those pictures... To end the day, we went on her 2 favorite rides again: Dumbo and the Teacups.

I wanted to hurl.

I forgot- we actually finished by going on Space Mountain- which was completely empty. After the ride, they asked if we'd like to just go again- and we wanted to, but Kennedy was done. So we went to get some ice cream. We went up to the counter to order it and she then told us she didn't want any. A few moments later I looked over at her and she was out.

(Oh- and do you like Justin's new glasses? They look hot, don't they?)

Needless to say, we all slept very well that night.


Those were the first 2 days. Like I said- when I have a little more time I'll write about the next 2 exciting days! Yay!