The Magic Kingdom

This is going to be one of THOSE posts…just be forewarned…We have about a million pictures to share our day in Santa Monica and Disneyland, so I’m just going to cram as many as I can into this post and fill it in with a few random thoughts here and there.

We were staying in Santa Monica at Michaela’s cousins Justin and Krista’s house. They actually have this really cool house that has an apartment add-on where Michaela’s Aunt Debra and Uncle John live. So factor in the two kids (Avery and Ty) and Justin’s brother Ryan, and the whole family lives in one nice place. Then consider that this house is about 4 minutes (in a car) or 15 minutes (by foot) from a beautiful beach, and I’d say they have a nice setup working.

Landon and Avery are extremely close cousins and as soon as we arrived they were off and playing with each other. Ty is a little younger but still had a great time following around the older kids.

On Tuesday morning we all got up and headed over to the beach for a bit to snap some pictures and walk around in the sand. Unfortunately Landon had other ideas and within the course of about 5 minutes was completely soaked and covered in sand. We ended up stripping off the wet clothes and he cruised around the beach in his underwear.

After the beach, it was on to the main event. It was about a 40 minute drive from their place to Disneyland, and we rolled into the Magic Kingdom around 12:30pm. I honestly don’t know who was more excited, Landon or Michaela. They were both wide-eyed and smiling from ear to ear. It was a lot of fun seeing his reaction to spotting "Mickey's Castle" for the first time ever.

The first ride we hit was Snow White’s Adventure. We wanted to gauge Landon’s tolerance for rides, darkness, scariness, etc. He did great, and in fact, asked to see that same witch from Snow White about every 30 minutes thereafter. From there it was just one ride after another…Dumbo’s Flight with Daddy, Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s A Small World (Mommy’s favorite, and all “Christmas’d up” this time of year), The Haunted Mansion (with a Nightmare Before Christmas Theme), and Landon’s personal favorite….the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters! Michaela and I also snuck away to ride the Indiana Jones ride (which I enjoyed, having never ridden it before) and Justin and I headed over to get in a Space Mountain ride as well (definitely my favorite ride at Disneyland)….We can already tell that Landon will really dig the roller coasters when he’s a bit older. This picture here shows what he looked like after the Pirates ride...this was his "Whoa!" face...

We also managed to get in a visit with the big mouse himself…it ended up being quite a long line (which they conceal from you in a very sneaky way), but it was worth it to get a pic of the kids with Mickey. While he did enjoy meeting Mickey, I think he would have lost his lunch with excitement if it had been Buzz Lightyear. We didn’t see all the main players walking the streets of Disneyland as I remember when I was a kid. Instead you sort of have to travel to different areas of the park and wait in line for a while if you want your kids to get a hug with one of them. Oh well.

After the sun went down, it was time for the Christmas Parade down Main Street. Hear me now, should you decide to go visit sometime in the near future, find yourself a spot on the parade route well before the 5:30 start time. We ended up not finding one anywhere as the street was lined about 5 people deep, and had to loiter in front of a storefront so Landon could see the characters pass….all the while, dodging those crazy Disney guards that would jump on you the moment you stopped moving, telling you “this is walkway, please proceed to the roped off areas if you want to watch the parade”….all with sh*t-eating grins on their faces knowing full well there is no way in hell you’re finding anything. So we did manage to find a spot that worked and Landon camped out on my shoulders to watch the action. It was a pretty cool parade and was capped with Santa and his sleigh….at this point we could tell that Landon was starting to hit a wall, but we thought we’d make sure we got our money’s worth so we headed back for a few more rides and a couple of pictures in front of the castle (which was lit up and absolutely breathtaking).

In summation, this was a great Disneyland experience. Landon had a blast, Michaela got her Disneyland fix, and I didn’t have a nervous breakdown at any point….so everybody wins! I was also pretty proud of both Michaela and myself for walking around the beach and Disneyland a mere two days after our marathon (especially considering that we were basically carrying around a 40-lb sack of potatoes the whole time)...let's just say my legs and back were feeling it come Tuesday night!

We hung out for a few short hours on Wednesday morning and then made the 6 hour drive home. It was great to be back in our own beds and ready to recharge the batteries a bit before heading back to work. Landon also got sick somewhere along our trip, so he’s fighting through that right now and Michaela are trying desperately not to catch it…but we all know how that one’s going to end.

I hope you enjoyed our little adventure, I know we sure did.

I also want to mention that we have about a billion pictures from our trip that didn't make it onto the blog (there's just not enough room)...so I think we may get one of those Web Albums going where we just upload the pics and if you want to view them or download them or whatever, you can do so at your leisure...I'll post the information in another blog post once it's done. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Talk to you soon!