Wednesday, February 27, 2019

The Rest of February

Our kids teachers were so kind to gather all their valentines for them since we were in Disneyland over Valentine's Day. So they had a fun time at school the day we got home.



Belly shot. I think this was 25 weeks along.

Mckinley had her cute friends over for a late night. They ate pizza and watched a movie. They are all so cute together.

Bundled up one day to go to the park.



We took the kids to see the newest dragons movie. We all loved it.

Enjoyed some nice weather days towards the end of February. We are so grateful for our sweet neighbors who let us borrow their backyards whenever we want.

Ava is just the cutest little thing and has us all wrapped around her finger!

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Worst Day Ever at Disneyland

I didn't take a single picture at Disneyland on Thursday. This one is from Brandon's phone.

So the weather forecast showed the worst rain on Thursday, so we were expecting it. They had flash flood warnings. It rained all night and in the morning all the flower beds at the hotel were flooding onto the sidewalks. It was a mess. Brandon was looking at the forecast and thought we should stay in our room for the morning and maybe try going to Disneyland in the afternoon.

But then all his family left and then they were texting us saying the crowds were light and so was the rain. So we got up and went. It rained pretty hard on us so we were soaked by the time we got there. We ran to Pirates and there were totally more people there that day than the day before. So lame. We still walked onto the ride, but there were just tons of people walking on in front of you. We went on Pirates, went on Haunted Mansion, and then tried to find cover and decide if we wanted to walk all the way over to Peter Pan and wait in the rain for 20 minutes to ride that ride.

By this time the kids were crying, our shoes were like sponges and we were just soaked. So we decided to walk home. Unfortunately, the rain didn't let up and we just got even more soaked on the freaking long walk home. It was so frustrating. We went back to the hotel room and basically spent the rest of the day bored. It stopped raining at like 1:00 and never rained again so if we would have just waited in the hotel room for the morning we probably could have enjoyed our day. Although all the wait times were way worse than the day before so I think either way I would have been bugged.

We finally did go out into the hot tub and the kids at least enjoyed swimming.

Then we went to Jersey Mike's for dinner.

Ava fell asleep on the way and just slept through dinner.

The rest of the night was dumb. We spent most of it sitting around doing nothing. Jordan, Annie, and Karen stayed at the park all day. I think during the worst rain they were able to go on It's a Small World and they waited for like 25 minutes to see the princesses and stuff but I don't know how they weren't just soaked. We had our clothes hanging up all over our hotel room and they never did dry, we brought home a suitcase full of wet clothes. It was terrible. I was so nervous about getting up early enough to make our flight (we had to leave our hotel room at 5 am). I woke up at 1:45 and never went back to sleep. I had three nights of insomnia in a 5 night period and it was so awful.

We did make our flight and eventually got home. I sent all the kids off to school for Friday afternoon and called my mom and just cried! This trip was really rough for me. Luckily I am the only one who really felt that way. The kids think they had a great trip! And really, Wednesday was good enough to make up for Thursday. But man, Disneyland is not for the faint of heart! That's why I can only put up with it every 2 years.

Eventually I got all the laundry done and shoes dried and I got over it and moved on with life but for a while there I didn't know if I was going to be able to do that!

Phew, goodbye Disneyland for a couple (hopefully more) years!

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Best Day Ever at Disneyland!

Wednesday we brought our ponchos and planned on rain. It sprinkled on us a few times and then for a while we got our ponchos out, but it didn't last long and seriously the entire day we were walking on to rides. No Max Pass needed! It was the best day I have ever had at Disneyland. And there were so many more rides that the whole family could go on together.


We started out with Indiana Jones for the big kids. Tyler met the cut off, Kallie didn't. After that we walked right on to Pirates and Haunted Mansion. Splash Mountain was closed. Ava loved pirates and kept asking to go on it again!

We hit up the Jungle Cruise with a 5 minute wait. I love this ride!



The big people went on Thunder Mountain Railroad while Ava and I waited.

They didn't even need fast passes, the lines were so short.

Then we headed over to Fantasy Land and did the carousel, Snow White, Dumbo a few times, the Wild Toad ride, anything we could walk on to to get out of the rain. We never did make it on Peter Pan because it got shut down and then the line was crazy long once it opened up again and we didn't want to stand in the rain.











Megan and Lincoln were there with us too but they went off by themselves on bigger rides a lot. Karen stayed with us the whole day and was probably shocked to be able to go on all the rides instead of sitting around holding babies like she usually does. It was such a fun day!




I was happy to wait off with Ava while they all went on Matterhorn, then we went on It's a Small World just to escape the rain. Tyler was crying at this point and wanted to go back to the hotel but luckily we stuck it out because it stopped raining and the rest of the day was fabulous.




I love Ava's smile! Casey Jr. Train.


Buzz Lightyear you could just walk on again and again. That's what Ava and I did while they went and rode Star Tours and Space Mountain.



The Castle is under construction so you had to walk all the way around to get behind it. Pretty annoying.

We weren't even sure if you could meet princesses but we walked over there in the middle of the afternoon and there was no line at all. Ava was so adorable with all the princesses and this ended up being a highlight of our trip.

First they got to meet Eleana outside. Ava totally kneeled on the ground and was scootching closer to her.

Inside it was Cinderella first and she spent seriously a good couple of minutes holding Ava's hands and just talking to her like this. You could tell Ava was in love. It was so stinking cute.


None of the princesses could get Tyler to come in for a picture, but Ariel did get him to give her a "star fish high five."

Ava really loved Snow White too and was lingering at the end to wave goodbye to her.


We went on pirates again in the evening, at Ava's request, and she fell asleep at the very end of the ride, at like 5 p.m. I was in heaven!

We sat and ate beignets and then went on the train ride that takes you around the whole park. Ava slept on me the whole time.

It was only like 6 pm when we were done with the train, but we decided to go home. We had had such a full day and done pretty much everything we wanted to, multiple times! So Brandon took Ava back to the stroller and we walked home to the hotel.

Ava stayed asleep in the stroller in the hotel room for a couple of hours. Brandon went and got us dinner, the kids and Brandon went hot tubbing, and Ava just kept sleeping.

I got her out of the stroller to kind of wake her up but I took her jacket off of her and she just kept sleeping. So I finally put her in her crib. We thought for sure she would wake up at midnight and be up for a couple of hours or something but that girl slept for almost 14 hours straight and woke up at 6:40 the next morning. Crazy!

Had to document our big three kids sleeping sideways on a Queen because they probably won't be able to do this for much longer and we will have to book bigger hotel rooms.

Lincoln and Megan surprised all our kids with Minnie and Mickey Mouse dolls which they absolutely love!!! What an amazing day!