Disneyland

Our niece Lillie turned 5 in January. We were invited to a very special birthday trip to Disneyland! We had originally told Lindsay and Mackay that we couldn’t make it because we were already making two trips home in December, but when Scott came home with an unexpected Holiday bonus the plan changed. It just happened to work out that we had Lindsay and Mackay for Christmas this year so we called Mackay and decided to surprise Lindsay at JT’s homecoming. We wrapped up a couple presents for the girls and at the bottom of the gift was our flight itinerary with a big WE’RE COMING TO DISNEYLAND written on it. She had no idea, it was an awesome surprise.

The Disneyland trip came just a few days after my last day with Kneaders(a different blog post). It was a nice ease into retirement. We spent weeks preparing for Disneyland. Reading blogs and researching tips. I wanted to make the girls some princess dresses that would be comfortable for all day at the park. I made Lillie a Cinderella dress a couple years ago and modified that pattern to make the girls dresses. They turned out exactly how I wanted them, and they loved them. I counted close to ten times mothers commenting on how pretty Lillie’s dress was. Plus it wasn’t itchy and was about 1/3 the cost of an Elsa dress at the park. Major win. We were so excited we brought some Frozen themed cookies from work for the girls.

With two little girls we had a serious case of Frozen Fever. Adults included. We had mapped out how to meet Anna & Elsa first thing. We knew which line to get into and took off running as soon as they dropped the rope. We found out that we only needed to have one person to wait in line for a pass to come back and see Anna & Elsa so while Mackay stood in line we went over to Olaf’s snow play area. We went sledding and I asked Lillie if she wanted to build a snowman. Her whole face lit up. It was so magical! They give you a little buzzer for when you need to get in line to meet Olaf, ours went off and right as we were almost to the front of the line Mackay comes running in from the Anna & Elsa line just in time to meet Olaf! We knew we were rocking this.

Lillie's Snowman :) 

 Mackay got us a great time for Anna & Elsa at like 10:30. We decided to head over about 10mins early and the group before us had finished a little early. So they let us walk right back! We had a ton of unrushed time for the girls to meet them. The adults were laughing/crying/high fiving/taking pictures and videos. We were so proud of ourselves. Anna & Elsa were awesome. Charly laid down on the floor and Anna laid down with her. Elsa told Lillie how pretty her dress was and it was awesome. They hugged and twirled and wrote autographs.  Going with kids is a total game changer. I think if Scott and I had gone by ourselves it would have been cool, but watching the little girls light up catching a glimpse of the magic was incredible.

The anticipation! 

We saw Anna & Elsa!!! 

After we met Anna & Elsa we all relaxed a little bit from the schedule we had planned out. We had a really great rotation of five adults to two kids. My little sister Alyssa came with us too. Since it was January we walked onto pretty much every single ride. We did take a break from princessing and went to Marvel World for the boys. We met Thor and Captain America and swapped out adults to ride Space Mountain several times. We caught several shows and bought matching T-Shirts and hats. It was such a good trip.

Alyssa the dancer made Space Mountain a Party. 

We love Uncle Scott! 

The Ferris Wheel was definitely a favorite. I had packed a little tube of “pixie dust” (glitter) to sprinkle on the girls to make them brave on scary rides. We put some on Lillie and she tackled Space Mountain with Dad. So we didn’t know that a swinging gondola on the ferris wheel would be terrifying. Our car had 7 people in it. 5 adults. We started going around the wheel and our gondola started swinging and we all started freaking out. Lillie insisted the Dad needed some pixie dust to make him brave and we dumped the whole bottle on Mackay. It was a riot. We were laughing and screaming so hard. Naturally we did it again the next day.

It was so fun to get to be a tourist with Scott. He loves the things I love and it makes vacation a lot of fun.  It was a perfect trip.