Disney Trip - Day 2 - Disneyland

Due to the time change and daylight savings, Chase woke up at 5:00 am. Which, since we were all in the same room, meant we all woke up at 5:00 am. Awesome. Especially since Disneyland didn't open until 10:00am that day. We had to sit around and wait for awhile, eat some Mickey D's, and try to distract Emily. She was a little anxious.

But, we finally made it to Disneyland! We got there a little before it actually opened so we stopped to get the kids their 1st Visit buttons. It was fun to see the park all decorated for Christmas but it was kind of weird to hear Christmas music all day when it was November 10th.

I haven't been to Disneyland since I was in 5th grade even though I've been to southern California probably 15 times since then. For some reason I was surprised how small Disneyland felt. I guess it seemed a little bigger and grander when I was ten!

Emily has known for a long time about Sleeping Beauty's castle. I was really excited for her to see it for the first time. She did not disappoint. As soon as we turned the corner and she saw she yelled "The castle!!" and went running towards it. I think she wanted to move right in.

Once the park actually opened we went directly to the princesses. It was the entire reason for our trip! The princess area didn't open until 30 minutes after the park but we wanted to get in line early. We ended up being about 6 people from the front. Emily was so excited!


I'm not going to lie, I was excited too. I was excited for Emily. This was the moment we had been talking about for months. I was excited to see who the princesses were. There are three princesses that you get to meet but you don't know which ones until its your turn and you turn the corner and see them. We got lucky on our first time and got the princess trifecta.

Snow White


I love this picture. Emily is just talking to Snow White like they're best friends (which Emily really thinks they are) and she just looks so happy.


Cinderella
Emily just went and jumped right on her lap. Not shy at all.



Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)
The worker that is at the front of the line telling you when to go told Emily to curtsy to the princesses and showed her how. Emily really took it to heart, particularly with Aurora. She kept curtsying over and over and over. It was hilarious. Aurora was laughing her head off.


Emily was in heaven and did so great interacting with them. She can be a little shy with people she doesn't know but I really think she believes they're her friends so she wasn't shy at all. Robert and I said that we could leave right then and the trip would have been worth it. There is nothing like seeing pure joy on your child's face.

After that we rode some rides. Emily has never been on anything more than a carousel so I wasn't really sure how she would like them. She had been telling me for weeks that she wanted to ride the teacups. That was our first ride. I really don't think I've ever been on the teacups. Emily had no problems and wanted to go on it again and again. She loved every ride we went on. Even the dark, scary ones.

Waiting in line for Peter Pan. Both the kids loved Peter Pan. Well I assume Chase did because he didn't cry or anything and seemed quite fascinated.


Dumbo



Cute!


Later that afternoon we headed back to the hotel to give the kids naps with plans to come back later. Unfortunately Robert got really sick so we just went to dinner, shopping, and hung out at our hotel for the rest of the night.

We stayed at a hotel that was literally across the street from the entrance to Disneyland. It made it SUPER convenient and we had a great view.

This was the view out our window. We had a completely unobstructed view of the fireworks. It was awesome.

Disney Trip - Day 1 - Travel time

I decided to break down our trip into days, mainly because it would take too long to do it all at once. I don't have that much patience. Or time. So anyway, just warning ya. I'm also doing it for myself so that when I go to scrapbook it (like 3 years from now) I'll remember what we did. :)

About 2 or 3 months before our trip we started talking about how we were going to go to Disneyland. After about two days of Emily asking 12 times a day how many days until we went to Disneyland we decided to make a paper chain countdown. It worked great! She knew when all the rings were gone it was time to go.


Before we left, I stole this idea from our friends Lars and Kate. They recently went to Disneyland and made their kids autograph books. I thought it was a cute idea so I stole it. :) Here's the book I made for Emily.


We were ready to go. Day 1 was nothing super special. Just flying to California. This was Chase's first plane ride. He did pretty good. Cried for maybe five minutes total the whole flight but he was getting really frustrated that he couldn't get down and run around. He was a little exhausting but luckily grandma was there and grandmas seem to always have magic powers.


The rest of the day was spent checking into the hotel, dinner at Mimi's Cafe, and a trip to Target. Pretty exciting.

Chase has never been a really great sleeper so we were terrified of this trip. I knew being in a hotel room where we were all in the same room, not being in his own crib, time change, etc were going to make things difficult. I was right. We first tried to just put him to bed like we do at home. He screamed bloody murder. For a long time. I really don't think I've heard him scream like that. Luckily I am married to McGyver because Robert ghetto rigged some blankets so that he couldn't see the rest of the room, or himself in the mirror, and that worked wonders. He didn't really take naps the whole trip except in the stroller but he at least slept at night. I wish I would have taken a picture because it was quite the sight. I'm sure housekeeping thought we were a little crazy.

We went to bed early and were ready for Disneyland!!

Crazy Mom

Emily said the prayer tonight. In her exact words:

Dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful for this day. Help daddy to feel better. Help mommy to not be crazy. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.


What the?!!

Beauty and the Beast

Halloween was a definite success at our house. Other than the fact that the kids were recovering from being sick. Emily decided months ago that she was going to be Belle. When she was all dressed up she told me "I'm the prettiest Belle ever." Yes you are baby girl. Chase loves lions so he was a lion. And he was a darn cute little lion and would run around saying "Roar!" Love him.



My mom had a little party for the family.



We took a break from the partying for a little trick-or-treating. Emily loved it and did great. Chase missed it. He was asleep at my moms.



After trick-or-treating we took turns playing this weird beat up the other neanderthal video game. It was pretty funny watching my mom in her gigantic tutu skirt waving this little light wand thing around like a nut.








Chase was getting into Emily's candy. It was hilarious. He would pull a piece out, look at it and then throw it on the ground. He did that with four or five pieces and then he found a Reese's, looked at it and bit it in half-wrapper and all. He was looking for the good stuff! It was so funny!


This boy already loves sugar. Our bowl of candy was sitting up on top of the chair and he climbed up in it, grabbed a sucker, unwrapped it and went to town.


Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Princess Emily's Royal Birthday

Emily's birthday party was a few weeks ago. I know, slacker. It was, of course, a princess party. There really was no other option.

At Chase's birthday party I had asked my sister to take pictures for us since it's hard to do when you're hosting a party. She couldn't come to Emily's and I failed to ask anyone else to take pictures so the result is not very many pictures of the actual party. Only one picture of the actual birthday girl, no opening present pictures, and no blowing out the candles pictures. Fail. But we did get that stuff on video so that's good. Anyway....here's the pictures I did get.

Welcome to the party!

A few of the decorations. The nice thing about having a princess party is that we have an abundance of princess stuff at our house so I really didn't have to buy anything for the decorations. It made it nice and easy. :)






We had crowns for everyone to decorate.


The food table. Before the food. I'm kind of bummed about this picture because weirdly one of my favorite things about the whole party was the tulle bows on each corner of the table and I didn't even get a picture of them. Lame.

For the food, I decided to have Emily's favorite foods. Plus a few other things to make it a little more balanced.

We had.....
Grumpy's Pizza Pie = pizza
Fairy Godmother's Magic Wands = breadsticks
Prince Eric's Nuggets (named by Robert!)= chicken nuggets
Flounder's Fishy Friends = goldfish crackers
Merryweather's Tasty Treats = M&M's
Gus Gus's Diet Food = Salad
Cogsworth's Fruity Snack = cut up fruit in fancy glasses



And to drink....
Maleficent's Magic Potion = punch
Mrs. Potts Refreshing Tea = water
Abu's Apple Juice = apple juice


The cake. I had plans to do a lot more with it but I ended up getting REALLY sick the day before her party so I lost a lot of prep time. I'm a little disappointed but she loved it and that's all that matters!


Cute cousins


Playing games. We just did a short little Princess IQ test where you had to match the princess with her prince and name the seven dwarfs. Somehow my grandpa managed to come up with nine dwarfs. :) We also had a big vase filled with jewel rings and everyone guessed how many rings there were. Grandma Sharon was the winner!



Goody Bags for the kids. Filled with princess stuff. Ya know, wand, ring pop, pixie dust, bracelets, etc.

Suckers I made for everyone with a tag that said "May You Live Happily Ever After."

She also got a load of awesome presents. And about 50 cans of Play Doh. :) We're so grateful to everyone that came to celebrate with us!

I had fun with her party and afterward Emily told me "That was the best birthday party ever!" That's all I needed to hear!