Disneyland 2014 Part 1

Holy heck am I slow at this.

Honestly, we had so much fun and it was SOOO worth all the time we spent in the car.  And, I really really want to blog about it but am feeling slightly overwhelmed by it.  All that fun is just so hard to put into words. I know that someday the girls might not remember much of the trip and I want the photos and this blog to be able to tell them the story.  I posted some pictures of one of my childhood Disney trips on Instagram after we got back, and I honestly don't remember much of that trip and I was 4.  But, like I've told everyone, we can always go back when the kids are older and will remember more and it will be a different trip than this one was.  Right now it was more about our (Charlie's and mine) memories and just enjoying the magic that is Disney and seeing it through their eyes.

So I'll give it my best shot.  I'm going to break it up into multiple parts though to try and make it less over whelming on my part and then I won't have one HUGE GIGANTIC blog post trying to cover the whole trip.  ;)  I'll probably stray off topic a lot trying to get it all in.  Just bare with me!

So here we go:

Saturday (11/8)  we woke up at our usual time got ready to go and finished loading up the car.  I had loaded most of it the night before and tested out where everything was going to go the week previous.  =)  Yes I'm that crazy.  I have to add that the night before it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Charlie's phone met its end, our dishwasher decided to start leaking water like crazy, and the coat rack in the laundry room had come off the wall.  We weren't sure what to do about Charlie's phone because I didn't want him to go without one while in the parks in case we split up and needed to have them to find each other.  His dad offered him his upgrade but we were just so busy the whole time that Charlie never got the chance to find the Verizon near us so we just had to tough it out and it was a bit tricky at times!

It was supposed to be our longer of the two days so we had a lot of ground to cover.  We had dozens of potty stops, a lunch break, and lots of movies watched!  Charlie did all the driving.  I sat in the middle row with Quinton and the girls sat in the third row.  Thus why I had to practice our car arrangement to be sure we could fit in all our stuff with minimal trunk space.  But, they really wanted to sit in the back so I made it happen. =)  My bag of fun really worked out well and I would pull out an activity or color sheet for them throughout the day.

And here we go, off to Disneyland!

His cheeks jiggled with the motion of the car it was awesome

I had created sheets that she could match her upper/lower case letters using dot stickers

She fell asleep, as she usually does, and she was drooling!

This one stayed WIDE awake and was super cute. 

My wallet provided lots of entertainment for him

Puzzles from the dollar store, and yes that is a cookie sheet, also from the dollar store

Puzzles!

After a really really long day in the car, we made it to Cedar City, Utah.  Our stopping point for the night.  The kids did so great in the car for so long though!  We checked into our hotel and while I got us settled in for the night Charlie ran and got us dinner.  There just so happened to be a Cafe Rio just down the street, and it was tasty! We were all pretty tired and a bit cranky but we had promised the girls some pool time (and they really needed to get some energy out) so we headed down to the pool. It was COLD!  But, the girls toughed it out and had so much fun jumping in to Charlie and then swimming over to me and Quinton on the stairs.  He didn't mind getting splashed and got a kick out of watching the girls come up to him.

Our hotel room had two full size beds and the girls said they wanted to share a bed so we let them give it a try.  Except I was scared they would roll off so I made them sleep on it horizontally and put pillows all around them ha ha ha.  Charlie and myself shared the other bed and I just put Quinton between us.  Between all his wake ups (he HATED the store bought food and was always hungry at night to make up for the lack of eating) and waking up to see Natalia's legs hanging off the bed at her knees I didn't sleep that much that night.  At 5:45am Quinton decided he was ready to be up for the day!  I didn't want him to wake his sisters or Charlie for that matter so we hung out in the bathroom for about an hour.

After we got everyone up, fed, and ready we reloaded up the car and were off.  I had these cute shirts made when I had our other fun shirts made.  Of course I couldn't get a good picture ha ha ha.

All together we drove through Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California that second day.
Mores movies were watched, more potty stops, a lunch stop with horrific traffic. More fun to be had in the car.

I bought blank journals at the dollar store and stickers and had them make their own Autograph books

More sleeping for this little guy.  He got fussy at times, usually just toward the end of the day. But all things considered he did so great!

This is RARE.  She really never sleeps in the car, but she finally crashed.  

What was supposed to be our short day, turned into a very long day.  With the traffic we hit at lunch time and then of course California traffic we got to our hotel a bit later than planned.  But, we were determined to make the most of our evening anyway!  We splurged and stayed at the Grand Californian.  We wanted to be in Disneyland for easy access and we swore after the nasty hotel we stayed in on our 1st anniversary that we would do Disney if we ever came back.  Over all the hotel was really nice and the room was nice.  It had two Queen beds so we had more room for sleep than the fulls back at our Marriott room in UT.  But the room itself was small and felt cramped with all of us, all our stuff, and a huge stroller in the doorway ha ha ha.   We were happy to have stayed so close though because even though our original plan to go back and rest in the afternoons didn't pan out, (the girls were having so much fun and just wanted to keep going)  one morning we were in such a hurry to get out of the hotel to get to our magic hour that I forgot enough food for Quinton for the day.  We had also bought our Christmas ornaments that day so it was nice to go back and drop them off/grab food so easily.  Anyway, next time I want to try for The Disneyland Hotel.  =)

I had originally wanted to give Lydia her Elsa dress and Natalia her Merida dress for Christmas, but on a whim grabbed them during my last minute packing.  It was fun to surprise them with new princess dresses for being so great in the car.   

 We wanted to check out Downtown Disney and grab dinner, but it was late and everything had a huge long wait.  It was pretty much torture for all of us because we were all hungry and tired.  While waiting for our text to say our table was ready we walked around a bit and then sat outside the restaurant where there was some live music playing.  Lydia put on quite the show for us:

She and Charlie were also quite adorable dancing together. 

ROAR WE'RE HUNGRY!

Tired and Hungry and so over it all!

So anyway we finally got to sit and eat and it was AWFUL.  ha ha ha.  We chose the jazz restaurant (the name escapes me) because we thought Natalia would like it since it was like Tiana's restaurant.  The service was slow, the food was cold and really not good, it was loud, we were all just so exhausted... and the bill was enormous!!  They never brought me a highchair for Quinton so he was losing it like crazy being in my lap so finally I just took him and the girls out while we waited for charlie to pay.  

We then just went back to the hotel and just crashed for the night.  This time the girls decided they would rather take turns sleeping with Mommy and Daddy.  And then of course Quinton stayed with me.  I tried to put him in the pack and play provided to us, but he hated it.  Oh bummer, I got to snuggle my baby every night!  ha ha ha.  He was adorable too, I would rock him to sleep and then go to lay him in the bed, he would stir a little but then when he would see me lay down next to him he would put his hand on my arm/face etc and then fall back asleep.  I loved it.  The girls did awesome sleeping though and were usually so wiped out by the end of the day that they never really stirred when he would wake up for a bottle.  They were both big bed hogs and barely gave Charlie or myself much room to sleep but I still loved being so close to them.  

So there's what I've got for today.  I'll cover our first day in the next part!  

Disney Facebook Album

In the mean time there is a link for all my fun pictures!