Now that we're half way through October and we've celebrated Taryn's first birthday, I realized I'd better catch up with my blogs. So to do that, I've got to quickly get through the last couple weekend trips that we had over the past month. The main one was our big trip to California. Tyler had a work conference, so we decided to all go and take a quick weekend trip to the coast. When we realized that the distance between where we moved in Anna to El Paso was pretty much the same distance between El Paso and Southern California, we figured it wasn't a bad drive and the vacation would be worth it. We squeezed a lot into our three day weekend and we had a total blast. We were able to pass through Tucson and visit the Halls, Tyler's childhood best friend, on our drive out. And we were able to spend an evening with our good friends from Anna who now live in California. Abby was in pre-school when we first moved to Anna and Aubrey was born there, so to see how old our kids are now was just crazy. We loved getting to see our friends and catch up and let the kids play.
We spent the entire day Saturday at both Disneyland and California Adventure. We parked in the Woody parking lot and took the shuttle into the park. I loved this picture of Tessa because you can totally see her anticipation based on the hugeness of her smile. They were so excited for the ride and it was just the bus ride to get into the park!
We spent our morning at California Adventure mainly in their new Cars Land section. We also hung out a lot in Bug's Land because Aubrey and Taryn were too little to ride some of the Cars Land rides.
The main attraction (and the longest line) was the new racing ride, so we used the buddy pass so Tyler and I could each take a turn with the older girls, which meant they got to ride it twice. You race another car for the second half of the ride and I think the girls didn't like that part too much, but they still talk about how fun it was so it must not have been that bad even though they hid their faces during the actual ride.
One of our family favorites was the Ariel Undersea Adventure. The girls loved the shells we sat in and they wanted to ride it again before realizing we had many, many more rides to go on.
Probably the winner for best ride was the Woody Mania ride. It was 3D and shooting, so the girls loved it. Unfortunately, it was the longest line we had to wait in (about an hour and a half). Luckily, since it was our favorite ride, it was worth the wait.
Our final ride in California Adventure was the Monsters Inc. ride. Apparently it was a bit too scary for Aubrey (it was the only ride she said she wouldn't go on again.), but the rest of the family liked it. As we were walking through the line, I had to take this picture of Tessa because she saw this display of pay phones with phone books, pointed at it, and said, "scriptures!" I thought it was hilarious and had to have the picture so you could see how much the phone book resembled the scriptures. We also had to get a picture of Tyler with the "Cyclops Optical" sign. We thought it was pretty funny.
Sometime mid-afternoon we finally made it over to the Disneyland park. We took a picture at the entrance because they were decorated for Halloween, so there were lots of pumpkins including these carved ones of Minnie and friends.
We tried to head straight to the Princesses, but they were taking a break, so we ended up at the It's a Small World ride first. The girls loved it and we all enjoyed finding princesses like Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, and Ariel to name a few that were included in the displays which we think were new since our last visit (like five years ago right after Tessa was born).
We spent some time in Mickey's Toontown where the girls rode the kid roller coaster and played around in Goofy's house, Donald's Boat, and Mickey's house. The girls liked the roller coaster, which we weren't sure about since it goes pretty fast. But even Aubrey said she liked it and would have gone on it a second time. I took a ton of pictures in all the play houses, but they'll have to be saved for the photo book I plan to create. Here's one of the many as we walked through Mickey's house. I didn't realize until we ended up in line that we were going to actually meet Mickey. We were just trying to waste time while Tyler and Abby finished their ride, so unfortunately this would have been the best time to get a complete family picture (I didn't get any!). So here we are with Mickey minus Abby and Tyler. (We have a picture of just Abby with Mickey on Tyler's phone.)
And then we finally made it back to the princess line. While we waited the hour in line, we saw Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Mulan. Once we were at the front of the line, they decided to change princesses, so we actually took pictures with Mulan, Ariel, and Tiana. So it was fun to get to see as many as we did. Unfortunately, we missed out on seeing Rapunzel from Tangled, Merida from Brave, and Tinkerbell and her friends because we didn't realize that they were only available to see until a certain time during the day.
The other long line we had to wait in (most were not bad) was the Submarine Nemo ride. We thought the huge line we saw was for two different lines, but it was not. It was a pretty interesting ride though where we each had our own window to look out and follow along Nemo's journey underwater. It was pretty cool. It was complete with the bombs that go off under water which caused our submarine to shake and black out for a second which successfully freaked out even Abby, who had to ask a couple times if that was supposed to happen. We rushed through many other rides, as many as we could before the girls got too tired. I pretty much got a picture on every ride (again they'll be for the photo book), but I liked how I got the girls all together on the Pinnochio ride and realized after I downloaded the pictures that Pinnochio was right there in the background.
After the fireworks, we tried to make one last trip to the edge of the park to ride the Winnie the Pooh ride which was the one Aubrey was looking forward to the most. However, after getting there we found out that "there had been a honey spill" and the ride was not working. We waited for a couple minutes, but it didn't seem to be a quick fix and by that time Aubrey and Tessa had both fallen asleep, so we decided to call it a day. Unfortunately, it's the one ride Aubrey still talks about having missed and wished she could have gone on. So long day, but so much fun!
During Tyler's final conference session, the girls and I walked from our hotel to the beach. We followed the "walking directions" given by the hotel, but since I was alone with the four girls, I decided to take our double stroller. And as we turned a corner and saw the ocean, I realized we were pretty high up, and this is what we found. I took the double stroller down the entire thing and decided I had to take a picture to remember (and to show everyone else my feat). Luckily, a nice guy helped me lift the stroller back up for about half of the way when we headed back to the hotel. That was the craziest part, but once we were settled on the beach, the girls had a blast.
We built sand castles, collected shells, and tried to keep Taryn from eating too much sand.
After meeting up with Tyler and having lunch, we had to drive the entire 11 hours back home, so it was a long day, but we had all the fun adventures to remember to make it not seem so dull. It was a fun-filled packed weekend, but I loved that we were able to do it as a family and make more family memories. Hopefully it won't be as long before we go back.
