The Land of Mickey

We had a very fun family vacation, perfect weather, no car problems, great times.

The girls passed the time in the car by taking selfies.  At one point they reenacted the movie frozen, taking pictures of each scene (Ruth would put on the hat when playing the boy parts). On the way home, because our tablet wouldn't play the sound loud enough,  they turned on the closed captioning of the movie The Princess and the Pauper and then dramatized the entire thing, including singing all the songs.

On the first day we visited the tide pools and saw many anemones and crabs.

We had to hike down some cliffs to get to the tide pools. There was a nice little beach there where we enjoyed sitting and watching the waves come in.

 

Waiting for California Adventure to open. 

The new cars land was amazing.  The Radiator Springs ride is one of the best ever.  The technology is incredible.

Waiting to see the Pixar parade.

We spent a day at Huntington beach. It was in the 70's but the wind was cool.

Jared and I had a great times playing in the waves.

A day at Disney! Kaitlin and Ruth were both sunburned from the day before but they suffered through.

This about sums up our families reaction to Splash Mountain. Once was enough for all of us. 

The wait to see Elsa was over 2 hours, so we were glad when Elsa and Anna were in a float at the front of the parade.  We made a game out of counting little girls dressed as Elsa at Disneyland.  By the end of the day we had counted 37 Elsas and 12 Annas.

 

There is no other tired like Disneyland tired. 

During our two days at California Adventure and Disneyland we used the touring plan in the book The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland, and eventhough the parks were very crowded we never waited longer than 30 minutes in a line, usually much less. And we saw and rode everything we wanted to see, and many things twice. This was the first year when all the kids have been big enough (and brave enough) to ride everything and so we could all stick together the whole day. We really had a great time, exhausting, but great.

The kids were excited to see the ocean. Jared and Ruth had no real memory of the beach, so they were particularly amazed to see how big and flat the ocean is.  Jared had a good time in the waves, and we built a sand castle together.  The girls were a little less impressed. Kaitlin, especially,  dislikes all creepy crawly or swimmy things in the ocean. Add the hassle of sand on your body and sunburn, and I'd say we don't have any beachbums in the family. 


Happy Birthday Kaitlin

Olaf Cake.

We celebrated Kaitlin's birthday by driving 12 hours in the car to get home from California.  But before that, Kaitlin got a birthday button to wear at the Disney parks and all the employees and workers said "happy birthday" to her all day long.  We got home late on Friday night, and on Saturday Kaitlin spent all day with friends at our house. We bought pizza and made her an Olaf cake.  It was our town days this weekend, so Kaitlin and her friends were able to end her birthday celebration by watching fireworks. 

Meanwhile the family enjoyed the parade and festivities in our town days.  Chuck and I ended the evening watching Ryan Shupe in concert, which was very good, but also very loud.