Disneyland!!

Snow on Main Street

Small World

Cinderella's Castle

Family in Toon Town

Meeting Minnie Mouse

The weekend before Thanksgiving we did a short family vacation to California. Our main destination was Disneyland. I really wanted to take Callie before she turned 3 and we would have to pay for her, and I wanted to see Disneyland all decorated for Christmas. It was opening weekend for the Christmas festivities and it turned out to be not crowded at all. The longest we ever stood in line was 15-20 minutes (not including the hour wait for Nemo)! It was a great time of year to visit! I even convinced Nate to fly to CA. We flew into Long Beach - I would highly recommend that airport to anyone. It is a small airport so it is not crowded at all. You can walk right through security without a wait and walk right up to the rental car counter and have your car in 5 minutes. We have flown into Long Beach before and had the same experience. FYI: If you book early, Delta will have flights from PHX - LGB for $49 one way. We waited too long to book and had to fly to SLC and then to LGB but it was still fairly cheap.

Friday we spent all day at Disneyland. Our family is known to be perpetually late, but we were actually on the shuttle from our hotel to Disneyland at 7:30 am. I know, miracles do happen! We first headed over to NEMO. I thought it was a cute ride. Colton really enjoyed it. At the beginning of the ride, Callie said "Look, there's Nemo!" and then was silent the rest of the ride. When the ride stopped, she started crying and said "I don't like it!" I didn't blame her. I can imagine Nemo can be scary to a 2 year old with it being all dark and a lot of loud noises.

Colton was insistent that he wanted to ride the train roller coaster (AKA: Big Thunder Mountain). I convinced him to go on Matterhorn first since it is a smaller coaster and warned him about the Abominable Snowman (me telling Colton: Just like the one in Monsters Inc.). He wasn't too scared of the monster, but the coaster itself kind of scared him - too bumpy and fast. Needless to say, he didn't end up riding "the train roller coaster". Colton enjoyed all the rest of the rides except Pirates of the Carribean and the Haunted House. Of course, Callie didn't like those two either.

Callie took a while to warm up to the rest of the rides after the Nemo scare. She was even a little nervous in Small World and didn't crack a smile until the ride was almost over, but I think she enjoyed it. She really liked Autopia, Buzz, the Rockets, Winnie the Pooh, and Peter Pan. She absolutely loved the evening parade with all the characters. She kept saying, "Mom, look! There's Cinderella, or Goofy, or Buzz Lightyear, etc." I thought she would be afraid of meeting the characters, but she wasn't. Colton and her were able to hug Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, and Minnie Mouse. They must have more guts than me. I have a picture from when I was 4 or 5 years old, and I was scared of Chip and Dale!

The kids both took a short nap in the evening, so we were able to take turns riding Indiana Jones and I got to ride Big Thunder Mtn. while Nate headed over to get a seat for the parade. At the end of the night we saw the musical fireworks show and had it "snow" on us on Main street. It was fun to see Disneyland all decked out with Christmas decorations throughout the park. (Small World and the Haunted Mansion actually are totally different rides at Christmas time. They both are full of Christmas decor inside the rides!) We loved our day at Disneyland and hope to be able to do it again sometime!