Disneyland Day 2

Day 2 of Disneyland was the first day that my entire family was together. Coincidentally, we started out on the same ride that began our Disneyland adventure the day before! When we got there Amber and I were both needing to feed the babies, so we sent the rest of the family to wait in the line. Disneyland does this awesome thing called babysitter passes, so when Dan and Alex got to the front of the line, they got these passes so that Amber and I could each take someone with us and go up the exit to avoid the line! So we left the babies with the family that had already been on the ride and we had a 3 minute long double date!

Ya I apologize for the multitude of chins...I'm not the best at taking self pictures (teach me your ways Candy!!) and every time I end up looking either in pain or like one big chin.

After the Matterhorn, we went on the Storybook Land boat ride. I'll note here that all together, we had 12 adults and 5 kids...The normal capacity for the boats is 8-10, but we squeezed and squished and had some quality bonding time with 17 in one boat! I don't have pictures of a lot of these things, but my two wonderful sisters have posted many pictures that I have stolen for myself :) - Thanks! -

After Storybook Land, we stretched Amber's level of comfort as we all went on the Teacups. I'm not a huge fan of the spinning, fair-like ride, but I felt extremely brave when listening to Amber! She refused to go on, and kept Olivia and Teag, but the rest of us went on, grouped into 3 groups (no spinning, little spinning, and spin like you WANT to be losing your lunch)

Little spinning group one: Dad, Jenaye, Alex, and Kade

Little spinning group two: Ben, Elli, Dan, and Maely

Spin like mad: Bryan, Mom, and Tasha - note that this is taken before the ride actually begins...they looked a little silly but they made the best of their time one the ride :)

Not pictured - no spinning group: Candy, Emily, and I

Next up on the list was It's a Small World. For those of you unfamiliar with this ride, it is a 20 minute, VERY slow boat ride through several rooms that represent all the lands around the world. Also, to make this ride even better, It's a Small World plays on repeat the ENTIRE time...needless to say, not my favorite ride, and Alex refused to go on it at all, but I ended up going on it this second time with most of our family.

I tried to take pictures inside the ride, but flash is not allowed, and they just don't turn out. However, one funny story came from the fact that Elli was always looking for princesses in the different scenes. Ten or so princesses are in the lands where you would find them (Lilo in Hawaii, Jasmine in Asia, Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Jessie, etc.) Whoever was sitting next to Elli had the job of pointing them all out and helping her find them. This time Elli was sitting with my dad, and he didn't realize that if you didn't see a princess, you had to make one up. At one point, Elli was complaining that she couldn't see anyone, so I just pointed to a girl dancing and said "Ooh it's cinderella practicing for the ball!" My dad looked at me and said quietly, "no it's not! I don't see her"... I had to coach him a little, but by the end of the ride, he was making up his own princesses too :)

One thing I was amazed about was how many rides babies can go on. Olivia was constantly in a state of information overload as we went on many rides with loud music, bright lights, and swift turns. Here's another attempt at a family picture on the Alice in Wonderland bug ride.

Just for the record, I don't know any of the official names of rides, but I hope my descriptive titles are good enough!

These pictures don't represent half of what we did that day. We also hit up the tiki room, Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, and pretty much ran around all day long in Disneyland. We wanted to do as much as possible so we could go to California Adventure the next day!

That night at dinner, my mom had made reservations at a barbeque place in Frontierville for us to make dinner. They had live entertainment of a lady singing familiar country songs, and had all-you-can-eat barbeque, corn, beans, and other down home food. It was really good, and it was nice to have our whole big group able to sit by each other! The waiter brought around 1st time buttons, which was cool for me, as it gave us a little momento for Olivia's first visit to Disneyland!

I didn't want to forget the amazingness of smart phones at disneyland. Dan and Alex both got an app about Disneyland that included wait times, a ride history, and other cool information. This is Dan checking out what we should do next...

After dinner, mom had ordered a 50th birthday cake for my dad, which was this huge cake in the shape of Mickey's head. I don't have any pics, but it was delicious, and I'm envious of whoever got to take the leftovers with them! I think I can honestly say this was the most fun birthday party I've every been to! (and the only one that lasted an entire week :) )

While we were getting ready to go, the entertainment came out again, and I enjoyed how enamored Maely was with the beautiful lady who was singing. She just sat quietly and watched her sing her 3 or 4 songs...so cute.

A few minutes after this, the lady called all the kids up on stage to perform a song with her. Maely and Elli went, and they were a blast to watch. Maely was doing everything perfect, and Elli was behind the line of kids spinning and dancing, doing whatever she wanted :)

That night we went on the Nemo submarine, and Alex went with most of the family on Autotopia. After that, we were both worn out, so we decided to ride the monorail to the entrance of Disneyland and go back to the hotel for the night. However, we didn't find out until after we got on that the monorail goes from Tomorrowland to Downtown Disney and back. I thought there were other stops, and this made our walk back to the hotel about twice as long! However, I'm glad we did that because we were able to get the only souvenir I wanted from the trip, which was a set of ears with Olivia's name on them. I understand I might be a crazy mom because she can't wear them for a few years, but I just wanted them, and wouldn't be detered. We were able to go to the World of Disney store and get some Minnie ears embroidered for her. When we got back, Amber had the great idea of taking some super cute pictures with the ears on her bum, but that was easier said than done! Here is the good picture we got, followed by a collage of the not-so-good ones :) Olivia was just getting to the point of being a little mobile (not crawling by any means, just squirmy), so we had a fun time with her Minnie Mouse bow and ears!

That night we had a family game night, and before we went to bed Alex wanted to scare me enough to have nightmares, so this is what he had to show me...