Disneyland!! Part 1

The last week of April was Disneyland week for our family!! Alex and I had been looking forward to it for months, but we held off telling the kids until the week before. I'm really glad we waited to tell them, because they were able to have a massive amount of excitement for the entire time. We watched youtube clips of kids meeting miscellaneous characters and different rides, hoping to prepare them for the experience so they wouldn't be overwhelmed into terror. Then, we flew to Oregon a few days early to see family. As it happened, my side of the family was all elsewhere, so we had lots of C time. Here are the kids getting a horsey ride from Auntie Ashley...have I mentioned that my kids have the best aunts and uncles? They do. Always willing to go with whatever plan Olivia comes up with, and the kids adore them. 

The other fun part about our short trip to Oregon is that we got to spread the news about baby #3! We bought personalized M&Ms to share the news, and Olivia gave them to everyone individually as we saw them. It was harder than I thought to share the news this way, because everyone wanted to tell everyone else, and talk about it, but I wanted to get use out of the M&Ms :). Here is Aunt Kathy's reaction, which was actually the most surprised that we got. Most everyone else just said it was about time ... which really surprised me, as it will give me 3 kids in 4 years! This feels like a lot to me, but apparently Alex's family knows me better than I know myself.

 We lucked out that the Oregon Ag Fest was the weekend that we were in town. The Ag fest is like the agricultural section of the State fair times 4. There are lots of opportunities to play in dried corn kernels, plant different kinds of seeds, meet animals, and learn all about the things that we grow and eat. Olivia's favorite part was riding a pony, but as you can tell, Carter was more on the fence about it. Actually he would have preferred to stay on the fence and skip riding the horse. But he did it, and didn't cry at all :).

The next day was DISNEYLAND DAY!! Can you tell I was excited? I'm a huge fan of Disney in general, and was super excited to share this wonderful place with my kids. I didn't get Gary in the pictures of us on the plane, because he was relegated to the row in front of us.

I don't know who looks more excited the kids in the picture above, or the ones in the picture below. We were all pretty thrilled to finally be on our way. I already can't wait for the next vacation with this family, we just have all sorts of fun. 

Due to some great planning (thanks Gary!!) we arrived in Anaheim in the early afternoon, After settling into our hotel, and a totally unsuccessful naptime - can you blame them? - we were ready to head into Disneyland. Here's Olivia's 'about to board the Monorail' face...I wish now that I had captured everyone elses faces as well.

Most of these are just fun Disneyland pictures, but this next one is extra special to me. Three generations of accidentally matching men...such a special thing.

Pirates was the only ride through the whole trip that frightened O. She was very brave about it, and immediately afterward was talking about how she liked it, but slowly she mentioned (over and over and over) that the bone people were scary and she didn't like them. I didn't write down any specifics of things that she said, but every time we passed the ride on future days (it was actually closed for repair the rest of the week), she made sure to tell us that she didn't want to do that again.

 After our evening of bonus time in DL, we hit the hay and prepared for official Day 1 at California Adventure the next day.