We went to Disneyland!

On Thursday we returned home to Modesto from a three day Disneyland adventure! We took advantage of some great military discounts and packed up our two girls and Jim's parents and off we went. Well, Jim's parents packed themselves, but you get the picture.

We spent three days at Disneyland and the new park, California Adventure. Both Jim and I had grown up taking family trips to Disneyland and we were very excited to be the parents this time and take our daughters there. Of course this time Reese was too small to do anything, but Sammie had a lot of fun! She also had a few meltdowns and other cranky moments, but can you blame her? The rides and attractions at Disneyland are sensory overload for a two and a half year old! Sam's favorite ride was the carousel and she loved riding it over and over again. After awhile we didn't even get off the ride, they let us just stay on. She also enjoyed the Jungle Cruise with all the wild animal sightings, Dumbo, the teacups, and Tom Sawyer's Island with all the cave tunnels.

She did not enjoy Pirate's of the Carribean. We knew it might be too scary for her, but we were determined to take her on it. I don't know why, but we were. She did fine on the ride but she informed us afterwards that she did not want to go on it again! The first night they had a great fireworks display and Tinkerbell flew over the castle to the delight of the Samster.

Jim's parents, Bob and Sue, were great traveling companions. They watched the baby in the stroller while we took Sammie on rides and they also watched both girls so that Jim and I could go on the "big" rides.
They also got some time to go off and do their own thing while we took the girls back to the condo for a break or whatever. Speaking of the condo, we were able to rent a place that was within walking distance to the park. It was great! We had our own kitchen to make meals in and we didn't have to pay for parking each day. It was very nice to be able to come back to the condo whenever we needed to throughout the day. Here is Jim on our way out of the park one afternoon. See how excited he is to have both girls racked out in the stroller?
If you have never checked out www.vrbo.com before a vacation, I would definitely recommend it. It stands for Vacation Rentals by Owner and I've used it quite a few times for our vacations. Once in Santa Cruz, once in Galveston, and this time at Disneyland. Anyway, it's a great site and some of the Owners give military discounts if you ask.
Here are a few more fun pictures from our days at the park...

You can see how excited Reese is about her ears...Here is Sammie wearing her ears. She only wore them for about 2 minutes, but Jim was still able to snap a pic!

I had charge of Reese and the stroller for a little while one afternoon while everyone else was riding rides and I decided to entertain myself taking pictures of "Shoes I Would Not Wear at Disneyland". Here is one of my favorites. I mean seriously, who wears heels to a theme park?

So, we had a good, long, exhausting trip to Disneyland and we survived to tell the tale. It was tough taking two little kids to the park, but it was still fun. It was way cute to see how excited Sammie was about the horsies on the carousel and even more cute to hear her little voice say "Mom, look!" as she pointed at the flying Dumbo elephants. We can't wait to go again when the girls are older and able to do even more things at the park. Well, maybe we can wait a little while. We're still recuperating from this past week.