California Adventures, Part One

Britton at the zoo near the Polar Bears

We couldn't find Benjamin anywhere. This is where he was hiding

I love this picture. Our kids have always hated characters, but somehow they love the Disney ones. Probably because they had autograph books for them to sign.

Britton with his car. He took this picture himself

Dustin made a monster truck

Benjer with his car

Our Disney family photo. It turned out pretty well!

Our family has been planning to go to California and Disneyland for two years. This week, it was finally time! We're still here, but we decided to have a more laid back day and get back to the condo early. We are exhausted! We have been playing hard the past few days. Our first day here, we arrived after a very long, two-day drive. Dustin's parents are with us so we drove to Utah, picked them up, then headed to someplace in Nevada for the night, then continued on our way in the morning. We checked in and went swimming. The next day we headed to the San Diego Zoo. It was a great day to see the animals. It was a little cooler for California so a lot of the animals, like the big cats, were out and active. We decided to stay in San Diego overnight because we were headed to Sea World the next day. Sea World is where we discovered that we have the bravest 4-year old in the world! They have a pretty decent roller coaster and Benjer loved it! Britton rode it after some convincing and decided it was okay, but he didn't want to do it again. They had a little snow area where the kids could sled and play in the snow. It was pretty fun. Overall, it was a good time. Our Sea World Pictures will have to be posted later. The battery on our camera died so Dustin had to take pictures on his cell phone instead.

We drove back to Los Angeles and the next morning, it was Disney time! We got up extra early for a "Magic Morning" where we got to go into the park one hour before it opened to the public. Of Course, there were a ton of people with "Magic Morning" passes. However, we were able to get a lot done in that hour. We headed for the Buzz Lightyear ride first because it was the one ride the boys wanted to do the most. Then we went to Star Tours, which was so awesome! We all loved it. Then we went to space Mountain, all before 8:00. It was great. The park was super crowded but we didn't have to wait more than 30 minutes for every ride. We got in everything we wanted to do and then some. The boys both rode every roller coaster, except for Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, Benjer wasn't tall enough to ride, which is too bad because he would have loved it.

The next day, we headed to California Adventure. It doesn't have the magic feel of the Magic Kingdom, but it was fun. We went on Soaring, which was so cool. We all went on the Tower of Terror. Neither boy liked it very much, but they were good sports about it. We stayed all day so we could see the World of Color show. We had heard great things about it. I can't say enough good things about it. It was seriously one of the coolest things we have ever seen. Whoever created it is a genius! Once again, we managed to ride everything we wanted to, sometimes twice, in one day.

Today we headed back to the Magic Kingdom for another "Magic Morning." By this point, it was pretty much torture to wake up. We didn't get to bed until 11:00 the night before, and we hadn't been to bed any early since we got here. It was not easy to drag ourselves out of bed, let alone the kids, but we did it. Once again, we got a lot done in the morning before it got busy.

By 12:00, we were done with everything we wanted to do so we headed to Downtown Disney for lunch and souvenirs. Britton had something special in mind. Our spoiled Benjamin had been getting souvenirs just about everywhere we went. We're actually wondering how we're going to get everything home. The boys have been earning "Disney Dollars" for good behavior and such over the past six months. Benjamin couldn't spend his fast enough. He wanted to get "prizes" everywhere he went. Britton, however, found out about a place in Downtown Disney called Ridemakerz where you can make your own remote controlled car and he was holding out for that as his souvenir. Well, today we went there. It was so cool. It's like Build-A-Bear for boys. We were only going to get one for Britton, but they had "Cars" cars too and we couldn't say "no" to our spoiled little Benjer. Dustin thought they were so cool that he made one too. We told Benjamin he couldn't get any souvenirs tomorrow when we go to Hollywood Studios, since he's spent all his Disney Dollars, but I bet he gets something small anyway. We don't usually go back on what we say, but we're softies on vacation. We think Benjer knows it too. We're hoping Britton finds at least one more good thing that he wants. We're happy he's really thinking about what to spend his money on though. Britton did get a couple things at Sea World too. He really wanted a shark tooth necklace. He was excited because it came with six extra shark teeth! Oh, and both boys got to build their own light saber in the Star Tours gift shop. it was pretty cool. I guess Britton isn't doing too bad on souvenirs after all. Benjamin just got a couple action figure packs on top of his other bigger souvenirs.

The boys have both been so good and we are having a great time. I'm so happy we've had this time to spend with them. We brought our cheap camera because we didn't want to haul the good one around, so the pictures aren't great, but we did manage to get some good ones.