Okay, I figured I better get something posted soon or people are going to really think I'm ill. I am feeling much better now. Thanks to all of you for your well wishes. I think the plane ride really helped to prolong my cold an extra couple days by really filling up my sinuses with gunk. But I am definitely on the mend now.
As with the past couple years, the last half of January represents Super Bowl crunch time for Andrew. He typically spends many MANY hours at the Famous Group office producing the in-game graphics for the stadium. Last year we didn't see him for three weeks. So, I decided this year we would be traveling with him to California and the girls and I would be having our own vacation while he worked! At least we all would be in the same city. On January 19th, we all traveled to Los Angeles and made our way to Anaheim for one last family hoorah before not seeing Andrew for awhile. Saturday night we met up with Cousin Ed, Yolie and Patrick in
Downtown Disney and (ironically enough) ate at the restaurant Naples. We enjoyed a nice dinner and then visited the World of Disney store with them and browsed the plethora of Disney gear. They were sweet enough to get the girls each a bracelet (Tink for Ella and Princesses for Lily) while we were there. (THANKS guys!) They are still playing with them every day!
We visited Disneyland for the day on Sunday the 20th. I was nervous about this whole thing. First, we have Lily who seems to be scared of even little things. How would she deal with even the mild rides at Disney.
Would we be paying all that money for one of us to sit on a bench with her the whole day? Then there is the whole thing about standing in line after line with little kids, how would they handle that? Among many other things.... Well, it turned out great! We followed the "Dumbo-in-a-day-or-die" Touring Plan from the book "The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland". This book told us the best way to move through the park with small tots and make use of our time. Supposedly cutting down on our line wait time 3 hours overall. I'm sold! We followed the book's suggestions for
the Nemo ride and only had to wait 25 minutes instead of 2-3 hours! Who would wait that long for a RIDE?
We used my
Ergo to carry one of the kids on my back and the other one either walked or was carried by Andrew. It worked out great to not have to maneuver a stroller through the crowds of people or worry about where to park it or keep track of it. And the kids enjoyed taking turns riding in it.
We saw Nemo, Peter Pan's Flight, Ella did the teacups while Lily went on the Dumbo ride. We visited Toon Town and saw Minnie's House, Mickey's house, Donald's boat and Goofy's house. Ella rode the kiddie roller coaster with Andrew. Then after a nice break and nap at the hotel, we did Small World, the Winnie the Pooh Ride, and the train. An then back Toon Town for some more Mickey fun. We shopped in the Tinkerbell store and the Princess store. And finished off the day by going back to our hotel room where we could watch the Fireworks show right from our window (inside where it was warm!). They had some really great fireworks too. Rainbow effects, cubes, very cool stuff. Ella loved it!
We all had a lot of fun and Lily wasn't scared of anything all day. She even was happy to take a picture of all of us with the Mickey character and he tickled her. She was so excited by that and kept telling us about it. So Disney was not a disaster. :-)
On Monday morning, we grabbed breakfast and headed to Studio City/North Hollywood to check into the
Beverly Garland Holiday Inn.
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