Disneyland!

Our time here in California will be coming to a close later this year, so we're kind of hit in the face with things that we need to do before we move!  Disneyland is definitely one of those things.  I mean, we went back when Kendall was about 18 months old, and I was pregnant with Cami, but Kendall didn't start watching Mickey Mouse until after we went, so seeing the characters didn't mean anything to her.  Plus, she's older now, so that also makes a big difference - she's at an age where she can better appreciate something like that.  So we got a 3 day park hopper pass (which you can spread out however you want to, which is nice), Grant took off work this past Friday, and off we went!

It was a great time!  Both girls really enjoyed themselves.  And even though Cami is a couple months younger than Kendall was the last time we went, she does watch Mickey Mouse, so she knew who the characters were.

Speaking of the characters...remember back in December, I talked about Kendall's adverse reaction to Santa?  Well, I kind of thought maybe she would be that way with the characters at Disneyland.  Thankfully, she wasn't at all!  We had kind of talked them up to her, so she would get excited.  She definitely was excited!  The day before we went, she was going through the list of everyone she wanted to meet and hug.  When we got there, as soon as we walked into the park, we saw Minnie.  She was hesitant at first, but we got in the long line to meet her, and during the time we waited, she got more and more excited.  Although, she made sure to let me know that she did not want Minnie to hold her.  Cami loved it, too.  She's in this kissing phase right now, where she wants to kiss everything and everyone (except, of course, her mama), so she leaned over and kissed Minnie, so then Kendall wanted to kiss her, too.  It was very sweet.

Next up, we tried to meet Mickey, but they closed the line down right before we got there, so we met Pluto instead.

Earlier in the week, while we were at the library storytime, I checked out some classic Disney movies that Kendall hadn't seen yet.  One of them was Pinocchio, which I think is becoming one of her favorites.  So we went on the Pinocchio ride (which was actually kind of scary), and then we went on the Storybook Land boat ride.  The first thing you go through on that ride is the mouth of the whale from Pinocchio.  Before we went to Disneyland, I showed Kendall a video of the park on their website, and she saw this boat ride and the whale, and she was very adamant that she did not want the whale to eat her.  I explained that it was just pretend, he wasn't real, and he couldn't eat us, so she handled it well when we were on the ride.

One of the main things I wanted to do early on in our visit was to get Cami some mouse ears, since Kendall has hers from her last visit.  I wanted to get them early, so there would be pictures of her wearing them throughout our time there.  So we got them, and I think this was the only time she had them on that I could get a picture of.

We finally made our way to Toon Town, and we went straight to Mickey's house, since you're guaranteed to meet him there.  For some reason, they keep Mickey's house really cold, so when we got to the part where you meet him, he was dressed in his Fantasia robe.  Kendall said that was because he was cold.  Cami absolutely loved Mickey, and he gave her some special attention.  And I'm sorry for her horribly messy hair.  I do actually comb it, but the mix of her cowlick, pulling out her barrett, and pulling off her hat multiple times, she ended up looking like a ragamuffin.

After Mickey's house we ate some lunch, then made our way to Minnie's house, to meet her again.  As a side note, the good thing about going with just us is that we could do what Kendall wanted to do.  If she wanted to meet Minnie twice, we could meet Minnie twice.  That was really nice.  So we got in line to meet Minnie, which was kind of a long line.  Cami, of course, didn't want to wear her mouse ears, so she was letting her Daddy get a chance to wear them.

After Minnie's house, we went to Goofy's house, which is great because it has a playground.

Cami started really fading at this point (it was probably about 2:00), so we put her in the stroller, and Grant walked around with her to try to get her to sleep.  Kendall and I went on the Go Coaster, which is a mini roller coaster.  The line was really long for this, but every time the coaster would go by us (which, by the way, the coaster got really close to the line), Kendall would scream out of excitement.  She's a little on the daredevil side when it comes to stuff like this.  When it was our turn, they put us in the front car, which I thought she would be scared of, but she wasn't.  Then she raised her arms for most of the ride.  The only part of the ride she didn't like was the end.  She was not quite ready for it to be over - and for what it's worth, it's an extremely short ride...30 seconds, maybe?

Cami ended up not sleeping during that whole time, but she was kind of in zombie mode, until we got to another part of Toon Town.  Then she just wanted to get out and play.

Kendall was really dying to see the princesses, so that's where we went next, but the line was (again) long.  So we took another chance at trying to get Cami to go to sleep.  This time, we were successful!

We finally got up to meet the princesses, and the first one up was Belle.  Right before it was our turn, Kendall saw Belle and got really excited, but as we walked up closer to her, she got a little nervous, and wanted me to hold her.  She was very shy around them, and wouldn't look at them, but she did look at the camera for a picture, so that was good.  I think because the princesses are more "real" than the other characters, that made her more shy.  So we met Belle, Ariel, and Tiana.

After that, we made our way to Pixie Hollow, so Kendall could meet Tinkerbell.  I thought she would be more excited about her, because she's seen more Tinkerbell stuff than princess stuff, but she was super shy again.

Then we made our way to Frontierland, and at one point, I looked down at Kendall in the stroller, and even though she had her eyes open, she was basically asleep.  I think she was trying to stay awake.  It was pretty pitiful!  I told her to lay her head back and go to sleep, and she did immediately!  So we just walked around the New Orleans area, which is mine and Grant's favorite part of the park, and then all over Frontierland.  We made our way to Critter Country, because I wanted Cami to ride the Winnie the Pooh ride, but the whole area was closed down!  So then we started making our way back to the front of the park to start heading out, but we wanted to get some ice cream first.  While we were walking that way, we saw Mary Poppins, Bert, and the penguins, so we stopped to get a picture.

We got ice cream, and poor Kendall was sleeping through it all - even though it was a super noisy place!  We did wake her up so she could get a couple of bites, but I don't think she remembers it at all.

So that was it!  It was a long day, but the girls really did great.  We're looking forward to going two more times before we move away!