The Happiest Place on Earth!

Well, early on March 1st Alex Olivia and I began our trip from Eugene to LA on our way to Disneyland. We decided to meet Amber and her family one day before everyone else got there, so we were traveling by ourselves. After our first (very cramped, small plane) 45 minute flight...to Seattle (yes we went to Seattle on our way to LA), I decided that I wanted to take a family picture of Olivia because she was visiting her 4th state. The next two pictures show our two failed attempts at taking said family picture...

First, a nice picture of my neck and my neck and Olivia's head and Alex...not sure what to say about that face!

Next, a super close up picture...but we're all in it! Pretty much I have decided that we cannot take self portraits, and we will do the awkward asking of a stranger from here on out.

I was super proud of Olivia's summery outfit, which we could only get away with wearing in CA. It is way cuter than these pictures show, but I absolutely love it, so when we got to the hotel we had a mini photo shoot

Thanks Den and Melvin for this outfit! and I apologize to all for sideways pictures in this post...I'm just a little lazy and didn't realize how many were wrong.

After a very crazy shopping trip to Walmart for snacks and a full night's sleep, we got up in plenty of time to make the 10 AM opening of Disneyland! I can't really express how excited I was. I hadn't been since I was 12, and I always love spending time goofing off with my family!

Here's Maely's "excited" face right before we went in:

We rushed straight to the Matterhorn, which was a "big person" ride that even Elli could go on, so it was the perfect start to our trip. I initially stayed with the babies, then had my first experience with the babysitter pass (see day 2 for explanation)...it was awesome!

After the Matterhorn we decided to get the Princess Walk out of the way. This is a building that always has three princesses for the kids to talk to. The princesses rotate in and out, and you don't know which ones you will see, but there's always three, so it's a huge attraction. Because it's so popular, it has a LONG line. I don't know exactly how long the line was, but we waited over an hour to meet these princesses. Amber and Dan were gracious and said we should go on our own and do something, but we wanted to hang out, so we stood there with the rest of them.

Here's Alex with Olivia in the carrier, our best friend for this line. Honestly, we didn't use the pack much, because she was either sleeping or being held by an aunt or uncle or grandparent most of the time. But I loved these two pictures, first the good one, then one with matching faces :)

again sorry about not rotating this!

Waiting in line, we were trying to think of anything we could to keep the kids occupied. At one point, I told the kids they could each take a couple pictures with my camera. I thought I would just delete them, but I thought the world as kids see it was pretty cool, so here they go. First from Elli:

Elli again:

Kade:

Maely:

And, an hour later, the glorious moment arrives! Here is all the kids with Aurora, then Olivia meeting her first princess

I'm having a hard time remembering the course of events, and honestly most of the funny stories are in Amber's blog (let me know if you want that link), so I'll just explain the rest of the pictures...This next one is one of my favorites. I have a lot of favorites, but the picture of Teag and Olivia sleeping in their strollers just reminds me how great it is to have "friend cousins" and how much fun it will be to have these kids playing together (with soon-to-be baby Johnson) soon. Teag and Olivia both did very well the entire trip, and I was surprised at the lack of meltdowns from all the kids.

Here's a couple pictures from Tarzan's tree. First is our attempt at a family picture...not so great but it's something! We didn't get the picture in front of the castle or the Disneyland sign because I was sick the last day, so I was glad to have this one from earlier in the week!

I forget the name of this scene in Tarzan, but this was a really fun section with pots to bang and lots of interactive "camp"like things for kids to do. The kids had fun with this part, but forgot it as soon as they saw the climbing rope (sideways again :(

Next came the Jungle Cruise. This is actually one ride that I really remember from other trips to Disneyland. I didn't remember how not real everything looked, but it was enough for this girl to be amazed!

And that's the end of my day 1 pictures, and my last blog about Disneyland. The day after I got home I was already looking forward to my next trip. I know that Olivia won't remember it at all, but it was really fun, and we had fun watching her reactions to different things. Next up, March happenings!