Trip to California - Part 2 (Disneyland!)

After years and years of Zach begging and pleading, we finally made it to Disneyland.  We decided that since we were going to Southern California to visit family, we might as well stay a few extra days and do Disneyland as well.  The kids were so excited, they could hardly believe we were finally going!

As you can imagine, I have tons and tons and tons of pictures, so I'm just choosing some random fun ones to post, it will give a good idea of what we saw and did and how much fun we had!  (FYI, these are in no particular order!)

Here are Zach and Hailey on our first day there trying to pull the sword from the stone.  No luck on either count, guess we aren't destined to be royalty!

Tate just loved the park maps.  He would always want to keep a hold of one, of course that meant that he dropped it many times.  The poor park clean-up crew - I swear that we didn't make their job any easier the days we were there, I think we went through at least a dozen maps!

Nana and Papa from California came with us the first day we were there. It was so much fun to spend some time with them inside Disneyland!

This was the first character we saw.  Tate loves Goofy and I was excited to have him see him so quickly.  As expected, he loved him better from afar than close up (notice Tate's slightly panicked face), but we got the picture to prove we did see him.

Nana, Papa, Taylor, Jon, Holli, and their kids joined us our second day at Disneyland.  It was so fun to have cousins the same age to pal around with!  Here's Nana and the girls...

and Papa and the boys (minus Jacob - I think he was off somewhere when we took this picture).

Aladdin and Jasmine were the second characters we saw and the girls stood in line to get their pictures with them.  They were so excited to finally see a princess!

Hailey and I went up to get a drink at one point and ran in to Woody and Jessie, so we had to stop and get a quick picture with them too!

We didn't actually get a family picture until the 3rd day since we were so busy going different directions and having so much fun the first 2 days.  But we trading taking family pictures with another nice family outside the gates that morning so that we could have a picture of all of us together.

Zach and I came out of another ride at one point and ran into Pluto!  Yep, you guessed it, we had to have a picture with him too!

Disneyland was so much fun, but definitely a lot of long, tiring days.  We would wake up early and not get back to the hotel until almost 10, so little Tate was so worn out during the days that despite all the noise and commotion, he actually fell asleep 3 out of the 4 days in his stroller.  This might not seem strange, but he has NEVER done this before, so you can imagine our surprise and how happy we were that he was getting a little rest.

We decided to use our early morning entry on Saturday when Kylie, Jedd, and Libby could go with us.  And as we walked through the gates, who should we bump into?  Yep, the star of the park Mickey Mouse!  All of us were so excited and we got another rare family picture with him (Tate was still not sure of these close up, large sized characters!).

We spent some time waiting in line to see the princesses that day too.  It was a long wait, but definitely worth it.  We saw Tiana, Jasmine (again), and Ariel.  Ariel is Hailey's favorite princess and she loved being able to get a picture with just the two of them.

A little later we bumped into Goofy again.  Tate was napping, so Jeremiah stayed with him while I took the kids to get a picture. 

We also waited a really long time to see Minnie at her house in Toontown, but they kids were really good sports and were so excited to get a picture with her.

Next we headed to see the fairies.  Zach wasn't too excited, but he was a good sport waiting with all the girls anyway.  Kylie, Jedd, and Libby joined us for the 3rd and 4th days of our time and Hailey had so much fun with Libby.  They had a blast playing together with Jocelyn and Mylee while we waited to see the fairies.

Here are all the girls with Iridessa.

Here are all the older girls with Tinkerbell and Vidia.

These cousins just love doing things together.  At one point, we got them all to sit on a bench in California Adventure and take a picture.  Of course they all begged to do a silly one - they are a bunch of nuts!

I have a ton more pictures, but I'll stop there.

Yes, we had a wonderful time at Disneyland.  It was long, tiring, and a lot of waiting in lines, but it was worth every penny and minute we did waiting.  The kids had a blast.  Zach rode every single ride and Hailey rode almost all of them.  Tate as young as he was, loved the rides we took him on and still talks about seeing Mickey Mouse and riding on the Tigger ride.  In all, it was a very fun (and exhausting, but the good kind of exhausting) vacation.  In fact, the kids are already talking about when we go back again!  It may be a few years before we make it back, but we all had so much fun, we are definitely going to be going back again as soon as we can!