So I am a little behind on my blogging. The last couple months have been busy ones. Since Thanksgiving, we found out we are having another little GIRL; we went to Disneyland; we celebrated Drew and I’s 5th anniversary, Christmas, New Years, and my birthday; we built Sammy a new bed; and we potty trained the little girl. Things are finally starting to slow down a bit and we are just gradually trying to prepare for our new little one — switching bedding and redecorating the girls’ bedrooms, washing and sorting all the little baby clothes, thinking of baby names, etc. For this post, I think I will recap our Disneyland trip and save the rest for later.
So about a month before we left, Drew surprised Sammy and I with tickets to Disneyland. He had been planning this trip for 6+ months but waited until it got closer to tell us we were going. Before heading out, Drew and I both tried to do research on what rides Sammy and I could actually go on, what shows we wanted to see, where to eat, etc.
I also spent some time making Sammy little Disney activities, since we were taking the 14 hour car ride there. We debated a little about flying, but decided we could make the trek in the car. I think we were all happy we decided to drive. The roads were great, and Sammy was surprisingly an angel, not to mention it is like a 5th of the cost to drive. Sammy got a new LeapPad 2 from Drew’s work for Christmas a couple days before we left, which I think was a life saver. She stayed happy playing that for a couple hours each way in the car. Driving also allowed us to stop outside Las Vegas and see my cousin, his wife, and their new little baby boy.
We had a three day park pass and spent the first day at
California Adventure. It was great except the fact that Drew came down with a
horrible cold and was pretty miserable. He did a great job of toughing it out
though and we were still able to catch everything we wanted to see and do. We
practically walked on most of the rides throughout the day, which was awesome!
We took Sammy to the Disney Junior show in the morning and watched Aladdin the
musical after lunch. We went back to the hotel for a nap and made it back to
California Adventure in time to see the Pixar Parade, get dinner and walk on
even more rides. Sammy loved the Mater ride in Carsland and the ladybug ride in
Bug’s Life area. We rode rides until about 7 p.m., which is when we saw people
starting to line up for World of Color. So we went and found a spot to watch
and waited for 1.5 hours for the show to start. It was a really long time to
wait and wasn’t really necessary. A ton of people came and squeezed in right
before it started, getting to see it just as well as we did, without having to
wait for an hour and a half.
The second day, we had our early admission to Disneyland and
headed there at 8 a.m. The lines were quite a bit longer at Disneyland, but
still not too bad. Sammy didn’t do well waiting in line, but she was just kind
of being a stinker. She either wanted to be held, would lay on the ground and
start crying, or try to run away. Luckily, Drew was feeling quite a bit better
because I made him wrestle her most of the time when she didn’t want to behave.
On the plus side, Sammy didn’t care too much about princesses, so we didn’t have to wait in any long lines to see them. She loved
seeing Mickey, Minnie, and Winnie the Pooh. On this day we watched another show,
Mickey and the Magical Map, and watched the fireworks that evening.
We spent our final day in Disneyland too. We felt like we
had saved quite a bit of money on food by eating breakfast before we got in the
park, eating snacks we packed in ourselves throughout the day and only bought
dinner in the Park on the first two days, so we splurged a bit the last day and
took Sammy to the character breakfast.
It was pretty fun. It was all-you-can-eat and Minnie and her
friends came to your table to see the kids and take pictures. Luckily, Sammy
was free for this too since she was under 3, because all she ate was 3 or 4
bowls of Fruit Loops. I definitely tried to get my money’s worth and ate until
I felt like puking.
On our last night we went to a BBQ place for dinner, which
was pretty good too. They had a little show on stage and Sammy got to go up and
sing with them. They invited any kids to come up and sing jingle bells with
them on stage and Sammy jumped right down from her spot and ran up there. She
was by far the youngest one up there, but loved it because she got to shake the
jingle bells.
Well this is probably long enough by now, hopefully I didn’t
leave anything exciting out. Overall we had a great time, even though we were
all kind of fighting colds. We couldn’t have asked for better weather while
there, it was a high of 70 each day. Thanks Drew for taking us on this fun vacation, we LOVED it and we LOVE you.
