Vacation in So. California

We had so much fun last week! I love to travel and go on vacation and this was the first week long trip we've done in a while. It was also really fun to do it with all my sisters and their families as well as my parents. We didn't try to stick together at the amusement parks as that would have been impossible with everyone's different potty schedules! Not to mention the different age groups involved. Nevertheless, we did find ourselves hanging out with at least one of the families most of the time. That made it more fun for my kids to be able to ride the rides with their cousins.

We stayed in Anaheim Sunday-Thursday and Oceanside Thursday-Sunday. We went to Disneyland (and California Adventures) on Monday, Tuesday; Universal Studios on Wednesday, Disneyland again on Thursday and Sea World on Friday. Saturday we went to the beach and just relaxed for the day. We had planned on going to the San Diego Zoo but we just got too burned out. Now we have another excuse to go back to So. Cal. Its so close there is no reason we can't go down just for a weekend getaway.



Taylor and Will anticipating their first ride on the "Finding Nemo" submarines.






Reagan having lunch. We bought about 3 of these turkey legs to feed our family one day. They were yummy!































































































































On Tuesday while in California Adventures, we ate lunch at Ariel's Ghrotto and got to meet a bunch of the Disney princesses. Mary's family and Nana and Papa joined us. I love the picture of Will with Ariel because while all the girls are smiling for the picture, he can't keep his eyes off of Ariel. He was totally smitten! Will's favorite ride was the train and his least favorite was Monsters Inc.. He is afraid of the movie so I knew he might have a problem with the ride but being the mean mom I am I made him go on it anyway. Taylor's favorite was the Peter Pan ride. Taylor was very brave and went on all the ride's she was tall enough for including Tower of Terror twice! Will fell just under 40 inches so wasn't able to do many of the older kid rides unlike his best buddy and cousin Kyle who did make the 40 inch mark for a lot of the rides. He wasn't in the first picture with Mickey because he was a little afraid of the big mouse but by the third day when we went to Mickey's house, he was all smiles and more than happy to give Mickey a hug and pose for a picture. It was the sweetest thing to watch him go in for the hug with Mickey. My kids both really enjoyed exploring all of Toon Town.

Universal Studios had some things for kids including the Curious George playground. We enjoyed this part of our trip mainly because we got to hang out more with the Murphy family. Some of the other families took a break on this day. We took the back lot tour of Universal and though I really enjoyed it and thought it fun and interesting, my kids were a little apprehensive and we had to keep telling them that everything was pretend. We were able to ride a couple of big kid rides due to the fact the Universal has great switch off plans for families and the lines were non- existent.

Reagan did really well considering she didn't get any good naps in most of the week. She wasn't much for the rides but did enjoy all that their is to look at in the magical kingdom and just hanging out with Mommy and Daddy in general.

We learned some things about Disneyland and their inability to keep their posted hours and that was a little frustrating when we arrived at Disney our first day geared up and ready to go only to find out we were there a couple of hours early! But it didn't ruin our trip and we really had such a fun time.

One thing that is really nice about living in Las Vegas, is that we are a lot closer to the beach and all the fun things of So California so we hope to go back many more times while living here. Let us know when you go and we might just go with you!