Disneyland!

We finally exchanged our good deeds for real Disneyland passes last week. And, since Ryanna has the world's longest Fall Break, it was the perfect time to go. Apparently quite a few other people had the same idea, but it was still fun!

I think that the kids would say that their very favorite ride was the Buzz Lightyear ride. They would've gone back again had we had the time. Second to that for Owen would've been Autotopia--driving his mom around in style. He didn't do too badly either. Though I hear Ryanna's a crazy driver. Ryanna went on Space Mountain with me. It was actually called Ghost Galaxy Space Mountain since they had it all scary for Halloween. Owen was just tall enough to ride it too, but Ryanna and I went first to make sure it wasn't too scary for Owen. When the ride stopped, the first thing Ryanna said when she pulled her hands off her ears and pulled her head out from between her knees was, "Owen is NOT going on that ride." Yeah, a bit too scary for him. We did do the Haunted Mansion though--it was a combo of Halloween and Christmas.

I wanted to do It's a Small World--childhood memories you know?--but one of the boats had bottomed out, so the line was frozen and they didn't know how long it would be and then we never got back over there.

So, things I learned:

1. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to do Disneyland in one day. No possible way. I think we did 12-13 rides and we were there from open to close.

2. The food is super expensive (not a surprise) and pretty much tasteless. I've never had cheese without taste before this. You can bring your own food if you want, but who wants one more thing to lug around? I did hear that the hand-dipped corn dogs are delicious, but I didn't know this prior to my visit.

3. Buying the program RideMax for your Iphone would've been worth the $15. It's an application that allows you to enter in every ride you want to go on and it takes all of the park data and tells you exactly which ride you should go on and which ones to do fast passes on and how to make your time at the park work for you. Since we had never gone before, all of the rides seemed great to us, but now that we've been we'd probably be able to pick out some favorites and use the program to our advantage.

4. There are not characters wandering the park waiting to take pictures with you like when I was little. I don't know if a Cinderella got trampled once or what, but when we did see two princesses walking through the park, they made it very clear that they would not stop for a photo, so I had to snap as fast as I could. Given that we had only one day, I wasn't going to spend it waiting in line for picture opps. However, we did get some villain shots while we were waiting for the parade to start.

5. A bubble gun may be worth every single expensive penny you pay for it. The guy in front of us in the Haunted Mansion line had one and he shot bubbles for his and our kids and it made the time go by so much quicker. Thank you bubble man.

6. Always bring a change of underwear and shorts for your potty trained child. You never know when you'll have ventured to a new part of the park and he'll wait till the last minute to inform you that he has to go NOW! Of course you'll have no idea where the bathroom is for that section of the park.

7. It may just be the Happiest Place on Earth.

We also went to Newport Beach the next day and there were dolphins swimming right by the shore!!! Seriously close enough that a guy who was snorkeling went out and swam with them. We sat and watched in awe. It has been the coldest summer on record for Newport and given that it's October now, you can imagine how that water temperature felt. The kids loved the beach and found tons of seashells to take home.

I also got to meet another biological cousin of mine for the first time! We had a great visit and she took us to an amazing Italian Restaurant.

Lastly, we stayed with our friends, the Bradshaws, in Lake Elsinore. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of that, but it was fun. We had a fun, exhausting, wonderful trip.

And, for a close-up of that big, pouty lip:There were seriously dolphins everywhere!!! See the guy in the water with them?