Disneyland: Arrival Day Sunday

So Sunday we flew down to Ontario, CA airport and got a Budget Rent-a-car to take the three of us to the Inn in Anaheim. We decided long ago that we weren't going to tell Irene about going to Disneyland until after we had flown down (or at least on the plane). She figured out from over-hearing Dadda that we were going somewhere on a plane. We were fortunate she didn't pick up anything else. :)

She was fascinated by the idea of renting a car and kept asking questions about "the white car" and why we didn't have Momma's or Dadda's car. :) It's been funny what she fixates on. Anyway, half way down I-57 I turned around (I was not driving), pointed the camera at her and we told her together that we were going to Disneyland. Photo snapping ensued as she went from dawning of recognition of where she was going to, insane jubilation, to oh my goodness I can't control myself, to I'm the cutest of them all. I'll dig out the photos tonight and post them here. :) They're adorable.

Funny enough, though she didn't talk about Disneyland after that. She needed to talk about the hotel we were going to stay out. She absolutely wanted to get into our hotel room. We arrived at the Fairfield Inn (see previous post for link) at around noonish. We were able to sign in, but our rooms would not be available until 4pm. Well... no nap for her today. We grimaced. April, Andrew, Mason, Geran, and a close friend - Brian, also were there. It was to be all the cousin's first time in going to Disneyland. They too grimaced as their 2 year old was sound asleep in the car outside. The hotel was kind enough to provide a spare room for them to put him down for a nap for a couple of hours. The rest of us ended up going to Downtown Disney for the afternoon and cruising. Much to Irene's distress, we didn't get to our room. She talked about it over and over and over for quite some time after that. :)

Our hotel is about 1.5 blocks away from the Disney entrance. Was a perfect walk (so long as you didn't have to carry around a 37lb child). We did nothing but walk while we were there. The car remained cold the entire time we were there...well cold to certain amount. It turned out to be 85 degrees down there the entire time we were there. Clothes had not been planned well *sigh*.

We walked down to Downtown Disney and spent $$$. Picked up a sweatshirt, t-shirt, and a photo book for a friend at Irene's pre-school. The store was huge!!! I took pics of the front of it. Again, I'll find and link here soon.

We walked further and found a French restaurant that made benet's (sp?). We all shared them and watched the kids dance to 80's music. Got tons of pics. Hubby then decides that the powdered sugar left in the goodie bag was too much to simply throw away and promptly ate most of it. :-O . Got pics of that too. :). We walked around some more. Saw the end of a wedding at the Disneyland hotel. Unfortunately I was too slow with the camera and ended up getting a blurry pic of Cinderella's carriage drawn by a horse with the couple in it going down a path. It was just beautiful!

We saw the Koi ponds around the Disneyland hotel and then went in and messed around at the arcade they had there. I realized that while we were walking around in there that it had been there that I had gone with my Junior High School Band to play. It was great to remember something for once. ;)

We finally got to our hotel and threw our shoes off for an hour to allow the steam to roll off. Irene was thrilled with the sleeping arrangements and we found that we had an adjoining door between ourselves and my hubby's sister and her family. So that was cool. The cousin's got to play a lot as a result.

April (Marcus' sister) had gotten reservations for 13 of us at the Naples restaurant in Downtown Disney that night. It was a nice Italian place that was entertaining from the point of view that the kids got to see them making Pizza. It was a lot of food. Irene had a hard time as she was on "borrowed time" with having had no nap. She wanted to do anything but sit still. A nice person came around offering to make animal balloons. She got a butterfly wand which thrilled her. Those that were there included Aunt Ellen, Uncle Kenny, Brian, Mason, Andrew, April, Marcus, Irene and myself. I think 4 of us got lost in the shuffle as they didn't end up making it till the following night to coordinate dinner etc. So 9 ended up being for dinner that night. We walked back to the hotel and prepped for the following day. We got Irene down for bed by 8:30pm and we followed around 9:15-ish.

Sunday: the beginning of a lot of fun yet to come. :)

Happiness is a child at Disneyland

Well we made it to Disneyland and had a blast. As you can see from the above picture, Irene just really enjoyed every single minute she could. I have so much to tell and probably should break this down to multiple posts. So I'll go with an overview of our schedule on this posting.

Sunday: Left morning from San Jose Airport and arrived in Ontario. We drove to Anaheim to our hotel called Fairfield Inn . It was located just across the street from Tomorrowland. We pretty much walked from there to Disney everyday - it was great! Spent the afternoon in Downtown Disney - the free way of walking around Disneyland without being in Disneyland directly. More details in another post.

Monday: Got up at 6am moaning and groaning because we were so sore from walking. Picked up a quick light breakfast at 7am so we could get into Disneyland at 8am. We hit Main Street first and ran into Pluto (above), got his autograph along with several others. We had reservations for Breakfast with the Characters at 9:50am. After that we were pretty much in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland for most of the day with a break mid-day for a nap. More details in another post.

Tuesday: Got up again at 6am, not nearly so sore. We were on our own today. Monday had a lot of people we were enjoying Disneyland with but didn't get through a lot of rides. So we made up for here. We got over there at 8am only to discover you had to have an early pass to get in, otherwise you got in at 10am. *sigh*. So we went to breakfast at IHOP instead. Expensive breakfast - don't go unless you're really that desperate to be in IHOP for the sake at being at IHOP. We made it into Disneyland at 10am and discovered our child was a speed demon. Matterhorn is her favorite ride, along with every other speedy ride she could make it through. No nap today as the park closes at 8pm. So we did *everything* we could and had a blast. Our closing part of the evening was getting onto the Peter Pan ride and then walking down Main Street. We stopped off in the Emporium there and got a scrapbook for the trip. During that short interval, Irene fell asleep in Daddy's arms and we had the perfect exit to a wonderful dream come true. I wish I had taken a picture of that one one. Didn't even think to. Oh! I did get a gig and half of other pics though ;).

Wednesday: Our trip home on the plane. We found out the night before that I-57 (one of the highways we had to go down to get to the ONT airport), was to be closed for a simulated terrorist attack on the Angel's stadium *rolling eyes*. So we got up at 6:30 or 7am. Brought quick McDonalds to our room and attempted to pack up all the goodies and our dirty laundry from the trip. We were able to do that and get ourselves to the airport before any issues occurred with the highway. We sat happily and had some snackies, played with our PSP's, watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on another PSP, and finally boarded our flight home in happiness.

I purchased a whole bunch of things for all of us, ranging from clothes to toys. I have to say it was the first vacation in years that I wasn't ready to go home afterwards from. There were a number of reasons, but the biggest one was: We were all together doing something as a family that involved us and only us.

I think I hate computers...

What do you think? Maybe a job change to east coast where I could actually make a living working in a stitching store???

*grumble*

Britain's Stupidest Laws

This was a great read! If you need a funny, click here.