Whirlwind trip to Southern California

We got back Monday evening from an exhausting but fun trip to Southern Calfornia.  We headed down on Thursday and made it to Anaheim around 7:30pm.  After a dinner at Denny's we made it back to our room before Grey's Anatomy....priorities right?  LOL! 

We woke up bright and early Friday morning and headed over to Disneyland.
Jacob's top priority was Star Tours then Jacob and I hit Space Mountain.  I still love that ride but not sure what's different about it since it had been closed for about 2 years for a remodel prior to the 50th Anniversary.   Jacob on the other hand thought it was too scary....we thought it might be too much for Ella but she probably would have liked it because she likes to, "Go FAST!"  We had a great time spending the day there but didn't even probably hit half the rides and attractions.  We decided to head back to the hotel in the early evening and order in Chinese and call it an early night.

Video of Ella meeting Mickey Mouse

We got up early Saturday morning and headed to California Adventure.  A much less crowded park but we love it just as much.  It's got a kind of county fair type feel, done up Disney style of course.  It's really neat because all the regions of California are represented within it.  One of the really cool shows was "Turtle Talk with Crush."  (Thanks Steph for letting us in on that one, we would have missed it otherwise!)  I don't know how they did it but we actually got to talk to Crush the awesome turtle from Finding Nemo, he was fully animated and everything--definitely one of the coolest things I've seen.  Aaron and I also discovered the secret to riding on coasters with the kids when they don't meet the height requirement--single rider passes!  We each got to ride California Screamin' and get on within 3 minutes, it has got to be one of the best roller coasters that doesn't throw your body out of alignment. 

After spending a full day at California Adventure we headed back to our hotel for a short rest.  We then headed back out to Disneyland for the firework show.  Best one I've ever seen.  Period.  Somehow they synced the fireworks to the music perfectly as well as to animation being shown on the "It's a Small World" facade.  Plus we were in front of Small World and there was a whole other fireworks display being set off near the castle which was also synced to the show on our side of the park.  It was beyond incredible and powerful.  We then spent the evening riding more rides...we even did Splash Mountain in the dark, in the cool breeze.  Brilliant idea.  :-) 
We ended up closing the park and made it back to our hotel at 12:30am.  Normally we would have felt major guilt keeping the kids out that late but hey, in Disneyland there are no silly parent rules and we were far from being the only ones keeping our kids out late!  And I swear, contrary to the looks on the kid's faces to the right, they said they loved Splash Mountain! 

Pictures from Disneyland and California Adventure

Sunday we headed over to Aaron's brother's house for our neice's 5th Birthday Party...they live in Rancho Cucamonga which is about a 30-45 minute drive from Disneyland.  It was a lot of fun that began with a treasure hunt, complete with cool map, around their complex to find the party location and the treasure box.   Special guest was Dora the Explorer that stayed to play games with everyone.  Ella got very excited about that!

Pictures from the birthday party