The Ryan's California Adventure - (Take 2)

So we made it...there and back...and enjoyed a really fun week in between! Of course we're exhausted now, but who wouldn't be after 4 days at Disneyland, 1 day at SeaWorld, a day at Legoland, and 2 glorious days spent playing on the beach?! It was awesome. There are so many parts of it that I want to remember forever. Ugh, the thought of journaling it all is a little (actually A LOT) daunting, but I will do my best.

So with that, friends, here is the first installment of "The Ryans Do Disney":

Saturday, June 21st - Our flight left a little after 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It was nice that we didn't have to scramble to make an early morning flight; instead we got to take our time getting ready and getting to the airport. And this time around there were no emergency trips to the ER. Thank goodness! In fact, everything was easy-peasy. The kids were a little hard to please on the airplane (apparently my 'surprises' were "not fun enough"), but by the end of the 2.5 hour flight this was the scene:



Ah, peace and quiet for Mom and Dad...(probably the last bit of peace and quiet for the week)...

We arrived at the airport a little early, caught our shuttle, and then got to the hotel around 7:30 p.m. It still seemed early, it was light out, the kids were way excited about Disneyland, and plus we did have an extra free day on our 'park hopper' passes, so we decided, "What the heck, let's go to the park!" What we really needed to do was eat dinner, but we were all excited about getting a ride under our belts, so we went into California Adventure Park and hopped on the Monsters, Inc. ride with no wait. Yay! Then, surprisingly, with no resistance from the wee ones, we exited the park and headed toward Downtown Disney. Apparently neither Dave nor I remembered that it was Saturday night...until we stepped foot into the "Downtown" district. Holy moly, it was CROWDED! And by now our "Oh, it's only 7:30, it's still early" attitude had faded, the kids were 'melting' due to heat and hunger, and our up-to-this-point enjoyable first night was going downhill...fast! I thought that spotting a little Italian pizza deli/joint with empty tables was going to be a good thing, but the pizza was more french bread like than crusty, and with my hard to please 5-year-old it was a 'no go'. Thankfully though our family motto is "When on vacation...", so the little stinker who had thrown a big stink and really didn't deserve anything else got to dine on a $5 parfait (which to our credit as parents we thought was made with yogurt...it was not). So with that, after our quasi dinner, it was back to the hotel and off to bed. I'll spare the details, but for future reference, trying to get 2 children who have just eaten a giant parfait of mostly sugar to go to sleep within steps of Disneyland of all places is next to impossible.
Stay tuned...