We started out the month with a trip to Southern California. It was a great time. It was a little rainy and the kids were tired from being up early when we arrived on the first day, so we took our rental car to Pasadena, California to see where the Rose Bowl was located. It was amazing to see how to the streets are so narrow in the area around the stadium. I can’t image that place on New Year’s Day, but we do want to visit one day and go to the Rose Parade and game. This time we just settled for looking at the outside of the stadium. In the near future they will begin giving tours of the inside, but we were a little early in the year for that.
It was beginning to clear up, so we took the opportunity to check out the Pacific Ocean. We stopped and Huntington Beach. The beach was empty due to the cooler and even colder water. Andrew and Leah searched for seashells and found some neat ones. We did dip our toes into the water and had fun with that until Leah got knocked down by a wave. She pretty much got soaked head to toe. It will be her memory of the ocean for a long time.
We checked into our hotel near Disneyland and California Adventure and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner.
We spent the next 3 days at Disneyland and California adventure. After being at Disney World a couple of times, it was neat to see the difference. It was awesome to walk right over from our hotel and not even need to travel by bus. The park entrances are right across from each other making park hopping easy. One huge advantage of Disneyland was the ease of meeting characters. They would just suddenly appear or you would turn the corner and they would be right there. We enjoyed meeting, Peter Pan, several of the Princesses, a couple of Fairies as well as Mickey, Minnie and the gang. Disneyland is basically super Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom. Highlights for the kids included the teacups, the old fashioned cars, Peter Pan, It’s a Small World, Dumbo, Astro Orbiter. Andrew also went on the Matterhorn, Big Thunder Railroad and Splash Mountain with mom or dad.
Carsland was amazing. It looked just like Radiator Springs and they even lit up the neon at dusk just like the Cars Movie and the same song played as the movie as well. The only downside was that Leah could not ride on Radiator Springs Racers because she was not tall enough. Andrew rode it three times -- once in the morning with mom and once with dad followed by a nighttime ride with mom. We waited for an hour in the evening, but it was worth it and Andrew was very patient in line. The lines for the rides in Cars Land were very long as it was still fairly new. We had a plan there right away when the gates opened and that seemed to help a lot. We also enjoyed the Adventures of the Little Mermaid, Toy Story Mania and the Big Ferris Wheel. We saw Fantasmic the final night. It was awesome. That was followed by the fireworks.
Andrew graduated from PreK. They had a fun event at his Pre School, Sanford Child Development Center. They sang a few songs, then Miss Becky presented them with their diplomas. It was a very cute celebration. Can’t believe we will have a Kindergartener this fall.
