Disneyland 2014

For Christmas we decided that our family gift for the year would be a trip to Disneyland.  We have found the best success with lines is to go during the off season and right after school gets back in session after Christmas Break is a great time to go.  Although some of the parades don't run and the park closes earlier, we have found that the lines are so much shorter and the park is far less crowded.  We didn't have to wait longer than 20 minutes for any of the rides at both parks.  It was wonderful.

Todd had a really busy time coming up at work and we knew that if we didn't take our vacation in January, we would not be able to take it until May and the park was just too busy then, so we booked a hotel, packed the car and headed to California.  We spent all day on Saturday getting ready to leave.  The boys didn't have a clue what was going on.  The complained all morning about having to clean the house and then they went to their friends house during the afternoon while I got all the bags packed.  Luke actually sat at the computer and listened to Harry Potter on CD for most of the day totally unaware as to what was happening around him.  At about 7pm on Saturday night, Jeff called to borrow the church key to play basketball and invited the boys to come along.  We wanted to leave around 8 when Kate would go to bed so we had no choice but to tell the boys of our plans.

We sat them down and said that we were going to the Happiest Place on Earth.  Jacob got all excited and shouted, "Yes, Yogurt Jungle," which is a yogurt shop down the road.  Had we known that Yogurt Jungle was the happiest place on earth ahead of time, would have saved us a lot of money.  Of course, we explained to them that the happiest place on earth was Disneyland and they proceeded to jump up and down from excitement until we left about an hour later.

 

This was the hotel on Saturday night.  We drove to Banning, CA and stopped there about 2am.  Then got up and went to church there before we started back on the road again.  We changed Kate's car seat to the middle of the car, and she did great!!

I don't know how it is that we got a brand new camera for Christmas and left it at home for our vacation, but that is what happened so all of our pictures are from our phones.  Not the greatest quality but at least we captured some memories.  We had such a great time, but it was a lot of work and Todd and I were pretty exhausted after three days.  I also forgot a baby carrier for Kate and she wasn't a huge fan of the stroller, so she got to be held a majority of the time.  She did great though.  Todd and I took turns holding her while she took her naps.  We would find a quiet place in the park and one of us would take her while the other would take the boys and go on rides.

Our days started with me going to California Adventure and waiting in line for fast passes for Radiator Springs Racers.  We combined those with a stroller pass and the boys got to ride that ride 2 times each day, so it worked great.  It was the only ride in the park that had really long wait times (over an hour).  We rode every ride that the boys wanted to multiple times and we opened and closed the park everyday we were there.

Grizly Rapids

Carsland

Tower of Terror; Neither Luke or Nathan liked that ride.

Carsland

My favorite picture of the entire trip!

Kate had her 4 month birthday while we were there.

Our trip highlights included:

Stuffing Nate's shoes with toilet paper until he was tall enough to ride California Screamin.  He cried when he couldn't ride it and loved the ride.  It was by far his favorite ride.

Finding the Ghirardelli ice cream shop in California Adventure.  We sat by it while Kate slept and there was no way we couldn't get a treat after sitting there for 3 hours.  Their hot fudge sundaes were delicious.

Watching Luke walk, hop and bounce across the entire park.  He never just walked normal.  He was too excited to get to the next ride.

Riding splash mountain.  A favorite for everyone.

People watching while Kate slept and noticing all the families from Utah in their BYU clothes.

Driving all night to get there and all night to get home.  It's some of my favorite moments with Todd because we just get to talk to each other without interruptions.

I think it will be a while before we head back to Disneyland.  For sure Kate will need to be older.  At least three.  We were so tired by the end that we didn't know if we would ever go back, but I look back on all the fun times and memories we have created there, and I am sure we will do it again.