California!

We arrived in California Saturday and Sunday took the day to go to the beach. We had a really good time! The kids loved feeding the seagulls. I don't think anyone else appreciated us bringing hundreds of seagulls scavenging for food. Oh well, we'll never see them again! The waves were really strong that day because of the earthquake in Chili. We were encouraged to stay out of the water but that didn't stop us from having fun in the sand!


This is as much sand as Sophie would tolerate. She did not like that stuff! It was really funny!

Monday morning we were up early and ready for Disney! I was so bummed when we arrived and I thought I didn't have my camera! Shane's mom took some good ones of us which I forgot to get from her but hopefully will be able to get them from her soon. After lunch I discovered my camera in the bottom of the bag and so that was great. This picture is of Logan after he got his "honorary citizen" award. A worker saw him sharing a sucker with his sister which fell out of his hands and broke. She gave this button to him and he was very proud of it!

Finding Nemo ride. I like the rides the whole family gets to go on together and this was one of those few!

The Jedi training was cool! I thought Logan was going to have a heart-attack when Darth Vader came out!!! Darth was trying to get kids to join the dark side. "Who will join with the power of the Dark Side?" Logan's hand shoots up, "ME! ME! I WILL!"
Waiting for Captain EO. It's a 3Dmovie with Michael Jackson. At the end Brandon asked me if that was a boy or girl. I told him I didn't know ;)

Tuesday morning we decided to go over to California Adventure and see what was there! It's such a fun place... almost as good as Disneyland. This is while we were waiting for Soarin' Over California, a really great ride!

Logan was very very excited to "meet" Lightning McQueen. It was a fun moment.

What a CUTIE! She was such a good sport. She didn't get any sleep on this trip either and yet she was happy throughout.

We were at Brother Bear and got to find out what animal spirits we were. Shane was a wolf, me and Lindsay were bears, Brandon was an eagle, Logan was a beaver and Sophie was a moose.

4 crazies!

riding the ferris wheel

While Gramma and Shane saved our place in line for Playhouse Disney the kids and I ran over to meet Donald.
Playhouse Disney! We went to this especially for Logan. IT was Wonderful! We saw Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, Tigger and Pooh and Little Einsteins. It was great! They did a very good job!
Tower of Terror. This ride was really scary. There are no words to adequately describe how scared I was in this ride. It was great, but SCARY! I didn't think Brandon liked it, but he went on it again later so he must have. Brandon came up with a phrase that we loved and will use forever more after this ride. He said, "Oh man, that one was so bladder-hurting!"
One thing about Disneyland and California is that they are really good at making the wait in line seem tolerable. First of all you can never really tell how long the line is because just as you think you are almost there, you go around the wall and discover another labyrinth of gates herding hundreds more people to the front of the line. But they do set things up so you at least have something to look at! This is in the Tower of Terror.

This is the Screamer. It is the best roller coaster I think! So much fun! Brandon absolutely LOVED it!

Waiting for the parade to start!

The Pixar Parade! This had floats from all the Disney/Pixar movies and was very very fun!

Back to Disneyland after California closed. We headed straight to Fantasyland for Small World and the parade.
So this is right before we went on A Small World. I couldn't believe all the dolls on this ride! Brandon really didn't enjoy it but boy-oh-boy did his baby sister! She was screaming and reaching for all the dolls and dancing (which she has never done, but has been doing all the time ever since)!!! It was so cute to watch! I loved it even more because of her. I guess that happens a lot. I loved Disneyland, but it was even greater because I was there watching my kids have such a great time!
The night ended with a celebrate party in the streets of Disneyland. Sophie loved this too! She was dancing like crazy! I tried uploading a video of it because it's too cute and for some reason it isn't working... I will try to get it up though because it's too cute not to share.

Wednesday the adventure continued with a drive down to San Diego to go to Sea World. The scenery was GORGEOUS! I have to admit I was not expecting San Diego to be so beautiful! It was so green, with rolling hills, orchards and ocean in every view! Not only was it beautiful, but it smelled so good!! I loved it. And just right as you're getting close you turn a corner and there is one of our beautiful temples! It was one of the best drives I've ever had!

Now Sea World. It was so much fun, but all you are really paying for it to see the shows, which are wonderfully done! The actual aquarium part was just okay. Since it wasn't very crowed, Shane and the kids got to sit right up close to the Shamu Show. They were really hoping to get wet and they did! Although Brandon didn't get as soaked as he wanted. "Only 34 drops!" he claimed. Of course it was more than that ;).

So after Sea World, we were at the hotel and I forgot to delete all the pictures after Shane download our pictures on a disk at Shane's mom's house before we left and I was running out of room soooo..... yes, as I was trying to delete the pictures one by one.... I DELETED THEM ALL!!!!!!! So there are no pictures of Sea World. I went online and found a few to share so we can rememer.
This is when the audience and trainers are putting their hands together chanting "Sham-U Sham-u" to get him (them) to splash the audience.
So Shane and the kids sat right next to this little podium where the whales came to show off. They were probably right where that kid is in the blue shirt towards the bottom left.
Splashing splashing! It really was neat to see how far they could splash. It reached up 16 rows of bleachers!
The shark exhibit was Logan's favorite part and Lindsay's was the paranas. Brandon's was the whale show. He is convinced, as is almost every child who sees the show, that he is destined to be a whale trainer.

Our second day in San Diego, we went to Legoland. This is a really fun place to visit. At first I thought that it would mostly be for Logan, but we all really enjoyed ourselves. Almost all the rides were "Logan friendly" He even got to experience his first roller coaster, which he said was "awesome"

They had these electric cars that the kids could drive. It was only for kids 3-5 years so of course Brandon just thought it was the most unfair thing ever. He felt better when I let him be in charge of pictures, and even better when we walked around the corner and there were bigger cars on a much bigger course for kids 6-16 years.

He passed his driving test. This is his license.

They had fun displays all throughout the part made out of legos. There was a really fun safari ride with animals made out of legos.
The kids loved this game. They rode in the boats squirting people and people had guns and were squirting them back from the sidewalk. IT was fun to watch and they got pretty wet!

My favorite part of Legoland was Mini USA. They built famous cities in the US all out of legos! It was absolutely incredible. There was Washington D.C., Las Vegas, New York, San Fransisco, New Orleans, Mt. Rushmore. There was also the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx. It was just unbelievable! The kids were ready to leave this area way sooner than I was!

After Legoland we headed back to Shane's mom's house where Uncle Troy and Aunt Linda were waiting for us! We were so glad that they were able to come spend a few days with us in Disneyland!

We went over to Fantasyland in Disneyland on Friday morning. This is the place where you find Cinderella's castle, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Dumbo and A Small World. I really liked it here so I was bummed that it was SO BUSY! Friday was the busiest day of all and it felt really crowded to me, but I was told that it still wasn't even that bad.

Waiting in line for Peter Pan. Which was actually a really fun ride!

Here we GO! Off to Neverland!

After Fantasyland we went to Toon Town. This was a really fun place! Very crowed, but a lot of fun. All the rides were ones that Logan could go on and every building has some type of lever to pull or door to open that created crashes and smashes and explosions and funny sounds. We had a lot of fun here.

Waiting in line.... lots of waiting in line at Disneyland!

Obviously Sophie couldn't go on this ride, so I stayed with her, but I could hear Lindsay screaming her head off! It was really funny. She loved it!

This is Mickey's house. Minnie was standing in front of her house and Goofy was in front of his and they were signing autographs. Since my kids weren't really into that I just took some pictures, but I begged them to go with me inside Mickey's house. They didn't really want to, but there was no line and I since I was getting certain that we were not going to meet Mickey (which I REALLY wanted to do) I wanted to at least go to his house. It's a very fun place. The kids loved it and as we were walking through out to the "movie barn" the kids got more and more excited. Out in the movie barn they were showing really old Mickey Mouse movies and there was a short line. They were opening a door and letting 5 or 6 people go through at a time. As we got closer, I heard a mom exclaim to her child "There he is!" I realized then, that we were going to meet Mickey Mouse!!!!

I was so so so so excited about taking this picture! It was wonderful. I was just sad that Shane and Sophie weren't with us. Don't feel too bad about it though... I'm pretty sure neither one of them cared.

We stayed until Disneyland closed Friday night which was really fun! They have a GREAT fireworks show that I didn't get any pictures of but that the kids and I just loved. It would have been better if we had gotten better seats, but it was still really great! By the time we got home it was 1:00 am. The kids loved knowing that they stayed up until 2 am Colorado time! They were definitely troopers but boy did it wear them out!

The first thing we did on the last day of our wonderful vacation was to head over to California Adventure to see the play Aladdin! It was such a great play... they did a wonderful job, and Brandon really did like it despite this picture. While we were waiting for it to start, he said to Uncle Troy, "Wake me up when it starts." and layed his head down on Kyle and fell right asleep. Shane and I always wondered what it would take to wear out our kids, they are so crazy full of energy ALL THE TIME, and this was our answer. Just take a vacation where we are walking all day for 8 days straight, staying up late and getting up early. They were SO TIRED by the end of the week that were really were glad to leave, which I didn't think would ever happen.

The Bug's Life show was really great too. They had stink bugs that sprayed actual stink in your face, the bees stung your back and the other small bugs crawled under your bumb as they were leaving the theater! It was CRAZY!
The favorite roller-coaster was the Screamer! It was a lot of fun and while Shane, me and Brandon were on it, Aunt Linda and Grandma got pictures of Logan and Lindsay with Woody and Jessie!

Everyone got to choose one last ride and Shane and I took Logan on his... Buzz Lightyear. The ride kept breaking down as we were riding on it, but that didn't hurt Logan's feelings, it just gave us a longer time to shoot Zurg!!!
IT was raining when we were leaving. The kids still wanted to shop for their souvenirs and we had to get some caramel apples. By the time we were done, WE WERE DONE! Everyone was so cranky and tired and I was frustrated but despite that last wet miserable hour......

We had a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL TIME at the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!