Disneyland 2010

After participating in Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Day" program back in February, we finally made it to Anaheim to redeem our free tickets to Disneyland the last week of October. It was a quick trip. We drove as far as St. George, where we spent the night at the condo of a good friend (and several hours at the temple visitor's center across the street). The following day we drove to Anaheim, stopping in Las Vegas for a walk down the strip. The next day we did some shopping at Downtown Disney...

where the girls bought a Disney bear at Build-A-Bear and Noah bought a Jedi suit for his dog, Link, because "Link is just obsessed with Star Wars!" as Noah said.

The Lego store was the other store that we spent a lot of time in. So many choices!

And Noah found an awesome buccaneer who was not too friendly.

The afternoon was spent at Newport Beach. Emily and I could have stayed there forever.

Even though our hotel wasn't TOO far from the park, Kevin took pity on his pregnant wife and small children and he and Porter ran a shuttle service to the front gate and then took the car back to park it at the hotel. This probably saved us a good half hour and when we had to walk clear back to the hotel at the end of the day, we were SO thankful for the ride in the morning.

I have never been to Disneyland in the fall before. Disney sure does it up right! The whole park was decorated for Halloween. It was amazing! And I appreciated that it was all fun and cute, nothing scary.

Ready for a fun day of adventure!

Aleise did not enjoy Disneyland as much as we had hoped. Even after a trip to Lagoon this
summer, which she loved, she was still scared of any of the rides that happened inside a dark building (yes, that is at least 90% of the rides in the park.) So she and I spent most of the day together riding the trains and the carousel and Dumbo. But she did love the Pooh ride. It was her favorite.

Definitely the highlight of the trip for Noah was getting chosen to participate in the Jedi Training Academy, where he fought Darth Vader and defeated him!


Yep, the Happiest Place on Earth!

We started home the next day, stopping at the outlet mall in Barstow where we did some Christmas shopping before continuing on to St. George. The next night found us back at home, tired and with colds but with some great memories! Nothing beats vacations together as a family! I love spending time with my kids and taking them on adventures that I enjoyed growing up!