The House of Mouse

Greetings from Disneyland! We've spent the better part of the last three days there and it was fantastic. The kids did really well and had a great time.

On Tuesday we drove straight from Philip and Carol's house to the park and arrived around noon. We stayed until about 4 pm and rode several rides, including the Disneyland Train (William loved this ride and requested it again on Wednesday), Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and Matterhorn. Then we had Chinese food and checked into our hotel.

On Wednesday we were up and on the bus to Disneyland at 7 am. We were first in line and were picked to open the park at 8 am, which was really cool. They pick a family every day to go into the park ahead of everyone else and help them do a countdown before everyone gets in. They let you sign a guestbook and give you Honorary Citizen of Disneyland buttons. It was really fun and several people recognized us throughout the day just walking around the park as being the ones who opened the park. Anyway, we rode a ton of rides and then headed over to California Adventure around 11 am for some more fun. We left around 3:30 pm, came back to the hotel and swam, had dinner and went to bed.

On Thursday we had early morning access through Magic Morning, so we were there when they opened at 7 am. Again, we rode a bunch of rides and basically finished up at Disneyland before 10 am, so we headed over to California Adventure, where Tessa and I had our Princess Lunch at Ariel's Grotto at 11:30. It was a lot of fun and the look on her face was just priceless. We got pictures with Ariel (and I got sucked into buying the official photo of Tessa and Ariel), Aurora, Snow White, Belle, and Cinderella. After we finished lunch we met the boys and headed back to the hotel for naps. We ate dinner and headed back to Disneyland around 6:30 pm. We rode more rides and saw the fireworks at 9:30 and Fantasmic! at 10:30.

The kids actually did more rides than we thought they would. Henry and William both rode Splash Mountain and Space Mountain, which I think is the craziest ride since it is so dark. William absolutely loved Soarin over California (it was my favorite as well) and rode it a total of three times, which is funny considering he is always talking about how he is afraid of heights. Tessa's favorite ride seemed to be Winnie the Pooh (we rode it 4 times total I think, while we were waiting for the others to ride Splash Mountain) but she really didn't scared during anything, although some of the rides made her nervous. Indiana Jones was great and Henry got to ride it 4 times, twice with Jay and twice with me. Lucky kid.

Today Jay took the kids to see a movie (Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs) and get some lunch while I did some laundry and got us organized and packed up a bit. They are all taking naps this afternoon (the kids were all up before 7:30, despite not getting into bed before 11:30 last night) and we have tickets to the LA Angels vs NY Yankees game tonight. Jay is taking the boys at 5 pm so they can watch batting practice and hopefully get a few autographs from the Yankees (we have baseball cards and balls to get signed) and then I'll come a bit later with Tessa. We're not sure what time we're leaving on Saturday, but hopefully not too late, since we lose an hour coming home and we anticipate at least a 12 hour drive. Hopefully the kids will be so worn out after our busy week that they will be somewhat mellow. We have movies for them to watch, so we'll see.

I'll post pictures and videos when we get home. Our room internet connection doesn't work so I'm out in the business center posting this right now and I can't do photos from here. But we've got lots to share from our trip, including a really cute video of Tessa giving Belle a big hug and video of William "surfing" at the beach. Of course we won't forget the awesome pictures of Jay at the beach either. Can't forget that!