Disney Days

I could not help taking advantage of another day off of school with a trip to Disneyland. I want to make sure we get good use out of our season passes! Jordan, however, did not share my enthusiasm to go back to Disneyland and decided to go paint balling for the first time, instead! Allen's lecture on proper paint ball etiquette didn't even change his mind! In this lecture, Jordan was instructed not to cry when given an extremely painful welt on his body due to being hit by the gun. Allen made sure he fully understood the possible pain and misery he would endure due to this activity, and yes, he still chose to go.... with a little less zeal than before said lecture. My baby is turning into a man!

So off I went with Kelsey and Jayden to the happiest place on earth. Traffic wasn't that great, but we made it to Disneyland without any incident. We had to park up on the Donald parking deck, one level from the top of the parking garage. I brought my stroller to hold our food and give Jayden a place to rest his feet, which ended up giving me a little grief once we hit the escalators. I had decided not to go down the elevators, I would instead have Jayden walk and I could hold the stroller down the escalator. This would have been fine, except the escalator wasn't on and I then had to roll the thing all the way down to the bottom. My leg muscles are so sore today from this brilliant maneuver!

One reason why I was excited to go to Disneyland at this time is because it is all decorated for Halloween. I was excited to see how they decorated it for the holiday. It has been a long time since I have been to Disneyland in the fall. Here are some of the photos I took of the Halloween themed decorations:

The weather was extremely hot! Temperatures well into the 90's. Luckily we had brought a lot of cold drinks to keep us hydrated. The lines were funny....rides we normally wait longer for, or get fast passes for, we walked right on without waiting. Two of our favorites were this way: autopia and the roger rabbit ride. It had been a long time since my kids had been on the Roger Rabbit ride that they didn't even remember it! That made it much more exciting to walk onto that ride! Then other rides that I am used to walking on to, actually had a wait, such as the jungle Cruse. That ride usually doesn't have a line and it was well into the walkway, blocking people walking by.

Our favorite ride of the day was the haunted mansion. It was all decked out for Halloween with the nightmare before Christmas theme. The whole dialogue of the ride was changed for this event, it was very cute! They even added gingerbread scents to one of the rooms. My kids really enjoyed this ride, in fact, we went on this one twice!

Jayden loved being able to explore Tom Sawyer's island. Kelsey did, too, but Jayden didn't want to leave the island. He was having so much fun exploring. He loved exploring the caves, climbing on the bone cage, pumping water out of a sunken ship to expose a drowned pirate, and meeting Jack Sparrow were highlights of this adventure to the island. He was thrilled to receive a map of the island from a lady pirate on our trip back to the "mainland". This truly became a treasure to him and he studied the map and found places that we had not explored in our trip to the island and he was ready to go right back to see the rest of the things we had not before. (Next time, buddy!)

We had a great Disney day and left all worn out, ready to go home. All the walking did our bodies good and the bonding time together was even better. I love spending time with my kids, especially at the happiest place on earth!