Disneyland 2012

View from our room.

Playing at the beach. It was chilly.

"Yea, I just swam in the ocean. In winter. In 60 degree temperatures. So what?"

Our balcony. They didn't know I snapped this photo. Sweet.

Max surveying the kingdom he procured for us. Beautiful, huh?

Fun at the pool.

Alan and Max love to wrestle in the water. It gets pretty violent!

DISNEYLAND!!!! That is essentially what we thought when Alan took us along on a business trip. "We'll add Disneyland to the schedule and we will have SO much fun!" Alan couldn't join us the first two days in the park because of work meetings. I drove the kids in from Long Beach where we were staying. If you know me, you know how much I love Disneyland. By mid day at the happiest place on earth I was convinced my children had ruined the magic kingdom for me. Lilly complained from the start. "I don't want to go to this place!" "I am not riding on any rides." She was scared, worried, or complaining about everything. The whining was epic. I told Max we had to make concessions on these first two days. Since Dad wasn't there we couldn't just leave Lilly waiting outside a ride...either he had to go by himself or we had to wait for Dad. We let Lil pick the rides she would ride on. That meant a new child picked up the whining torch. Max was annoyed, bored, and complaining. I was ready to leave them at the hotel and enjoy Disneyland alone!

The kids didn't know that our good friends, the Paris family, would be joining us later in the week. They moved to northern California earlier this year and my kids miss their best friends and I miss one of my best friends! Having the Paris' there did seem to make my kids happier. Especially Max. Lilly is Lilly...what can I say.

The take-away from this trip? Lilly may not be visiting Disneyland for a long time. Although, she continues to ask on a weekly basis (including as we were driving away from Disneyland) "When are we going back there? I love that place!" WHAT?!!?!

This is our view from our Long Beach hotel balcony. We weren't supposed to have an ocean view but a serendipitous thing happened. When we were checking in, Max found a Tiffany ring in the lobby bathroom. He turned the ring into the man at the front desk. That man was so impressed with Max's honesty that he upgraded our room and gave Max a big gift basket filled with candy, popcorn, and bottles of root-beer. Max was so proud. I didn't get photos of our room. It definitely had a California surfer vibe with a strong sea salt smell. It was fun being so close to the beach.
(I won't go into details here but I didn't sleep well that first night. Our hotel neighbor was having loud, noisy, weird...um...adult time...with what appeared to be a "high class" call girl. Ick. Really ick.)

She only looks happy because she's on "her" ride.

Can you see Max. His head is that tiny dot across from us.

This is what her face looked like most of the time.

Waiting for the cars ride to move. It broke down 4 times while we waited. After 1 hour and 1/2 we left the line. That was a popular ride...the line was INSANE!

Not smiling because he didn't want to go on Small World again. 

Tired of waiting for the cars ride. I don't blame them.

We forced Lilly to go on this ride. She worried the whole time. By the way, it was a little kid tractor ride in the new cars land. She liked it...but she'd never tell you that.

Worried. Scared. Crying. Whining. Again.

This is when we met the Paris family. So fun!

Lilly was so happy to be in Carter's company once again. She tried to hide the smile but she couldn't stop it from appearing.

As Jen and I say, these are just some of the photos we are hoping to add to the future wedding videos. :)

We ran into our favorite, long-time babysitter, Morgan! That was a highlight. We don't get to see her as much since we moved from West Jordan. How fun to run into her all the way in California!

On a side note, the first night we got to California we got word that Milton, our sweet dog, ran out of our house and in search of us. He got hit by two cars on busy 13th east. Luckily he wasn't really hurt. It was miraculous, really. He spent the night in the pet hospital. He was really shaken up, had a cut above his eye, but was otherwise fine. It was hard being in California and unable to see him. The kids were shaken but we were all so happy that he was ok.