So early this year Matt and I participated in Disney's "Give a day, Get a day" program, which basically was that you volunteer for a day of service locally and Disney will give you a free ticket to any of their parks. It was a screaming deal and the first million people to volunteer would get a free ticket. When we originally participated we knew that we would be redeeming the vouchers in Oct when the family was doing the annual fall beach house. However we were NOT expecting to be pregnant and we were originally thinking that just Matt and I would go, for a fun anniversary thing. but clearly when you are 7 months pregnant, the options of a fun day at a theme park are limited. So we weren't sure if we were going to go or not. We decided that IF we were going to go, we would go ahead and take the kids, since I couldn't ride any of the fun rides with out them anyway.
Then we found out that our good friends Steve and Jewel were going to be at Disneyland while we were there. This kind of sealed the deal for us. You see, they have a son (the adorable Jack), who is just a little younger than Izzie (like a month and a half or something), and she is also pregnant (about 6 weeks ahead of me). This worked out well, because then she and I could hang out with the kids and go on all the kiddy rides with them and let our husbands have a couple hours of actually riding rides and enjoying the park. If it was just Matt and the girls and I, I know that he never would have left us to go on any fun rides, and what a waste of a free ticket, ya know? So my first thought when we found out they were going to be there (other than how great it would be to see them) was that Matt could have a ride buddy.
So we met up with them at Disneyland. The girls loved the bus ride from the parking lot to the park. We told them it was our first "ride" and they were thrilled. It was Lily's first time on any kind of bus and she thought it was awesome. Not to mention how THRILLED they were that it had pictures of the Toy Story characters on the outside (have I mentioned their toy story obsession??).
We took our big mammoth double stroller, which is usually used as our bike trailer for family bike rides, but doubles as a stroller and the girls were nice and comfy. They loved the princess castle and got to see glimpses of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Although there were some tears shed that we couldn't meet Belle. She is Lily's favorite. But the line to meet the princesses was an hour long, and there was no guarentee which 3 princesses were going to be in there when we got there, so we skipped it. Lily was sad, but it was the end of the day by then and we had grumpy girls.
The park is all decked out for Halloween and it looks great, I LOVE the holiday season!
We met up with Steve and Jewel by the Carosel and the guys to the kids on rides while Jewel and I visited.
Then we took the kids to Toon Town and to meet Mickey, which was a bit of a wait, but was worth it. Lily talked for weeks about how Mickey kissed her.
The guys then split off from us to go ride some big kid rides and Jewel and I found a shady bench to sit on and have lunch with the kids.
Then we took the girls & Jack back into Toon Town to explore a bit. Which didn't last nearly as long as it could have simply because it is pretty hard to watch 2 kids 3 and under by yourself, when they just want to run around and you are in HUGE crowds. So while Jewel faired pretty well with Jack I had my hands full with Lily and Isabel (not to mention the fact that it is harder to pick up kids and haul 2 around in your last trimester of pregnancy), they had a great time, but after a while we decided it was time to go ride some rides.
The girls' favorite was definetly "Its a Small World".
Jewel & Jack
Pinnochio scared them a bit.
Riding the rides was lots of fun and I wish that we had more time to do it. I also wish that we would have had more time for Matt to take Lily on some rides that I couldn't do with Isabel and her and me. She always wanted the little boats and cars to go faster and I think she would've really like the dumbo ride and a few others that we didn't make it on.
We met up with the boys after they went on Indiana Jones, Space Mountain (which is all done up for Halloween), Splash Mtn, and pirates. I was glad that they both got to do a few fun things, it worked out great.
But by 3:30 the girls were tired from no nap (especially Isabel) and we just decided that rather than push them and try to sqeeze a few more rides in we would just take them home and let them spend a little time on the beach before dinner and bedtime.
We got back to the house and spent some time on the beach before dinner, which was so nice.
Matt's sister Heather invited us to just roll into dinner with their family while we were there, which was GREAT. We did our own breakfast and lunch/snacks, but had dinner with them every night. Here she is cooking away!
All in all, day 2 was a GREAT day. It was perty exhausting for this tired old pregnant lady, but it was SO much fun! And it set us up nicely for Days 3 & 4, which we spent in the water!
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