Sadly brushing off the pixie dust...

We are home. I love coming home. It's a mess, there's a ton of laundry to do, but oh how great it is to prepare my own food and sleep in my own bed. Lovely.

We managed to pull off our big surprise Wednesday morning (THANKS RACHEL!!) and although Kira got upset when I told her we wouldn't be going to Oaks Park after all, she was pretty excited to head to Disneyland. Saying goodbye to Henry was tough, as we expected it would be. So glad we brought him along to the airport. We love our boy.

I have to say, I'm honestly not a big fan of Disney. My college education pretty much ruined the whole "Disney magic" thing for me. (Thanks a lot to my ECE & sociology professors!) As far as our family is concerned, we really aren't "into" Disney stuff. Kira's only seen a few Disney movies, and usually we've edited them via the "skip" button on the DVD player. (She's very sensitive to scary stuff.) Surprisingly enough, we had a GREAT time at Disneyland. Really, the whole experience was beyond our expectations. The parks were so clean and safe, the people (for the most part) were friendly, and we weren't bored for a minute. There was SO MUCH to see and do--we were constantly on the move, trying (probably a little too hard) to see and do it all in the few days we were there.

Our trip down to CA went fine. Unfortunately, it took longer to get out of LAX than we'd thought, so we didn't have a lot of time at the Park on Weds. We spent all day long at the park on Thursday, then Friday we went for most of the day, then back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon nap. That allowed us to spend one full night OUT. We saw the 50th Anniversary Parade of Dreams on Main Street at Disneyland, then went to the Electric Light Parade at DCA, then back to D-land for fireworks & Fantasmic. It was a late night, but really quite amazing. Magical even. Especially seeing Tinker Bell fly, yes, FLY from the Matterhorn to the Castle. That was just awesome. Saturday we had a tough time getting up and out, and all of us kind of wandered around in a sleep deprived/heat induced daze for most of the morning. It was so HOT the whole time we were there, and we just aren't used to that! Plus, all that walking. It's a good thing though, 'cause we pretty much ate JUNK the whole time we were there, and ridiculously expensive junk at that.

I've only been to Disneyland twice, and each time, it was just for a day. I went with my whole family when I was five (I think) and with my dad when I was eight. There wasn't a whole lot that I remember, but there were a couple of things that I missed: The Bear Country Jamboree (it's now a Winnie the Pooh ride), the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse (it's now the Tarzan Treehouse). We also missed out (which we figured we would) on a bunch of rides that were too scary for our little girl (ie: Space Mountain, The Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters). I can't believe we missed Dumbo. One of the biggest disappointments was missing out on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was just recently refurbished and reopened. The lines were UNBELIEVEABLE. Seriously. Our favorite rides were Splash Mountain (which we went on twice--way to go Kira!) and the Teacups. LOVED the teacups. I love me the teacups, complete with the Merry Unbirthday song from Alice in Wonderland. So fun.

I've uploaded our 1000+ photos. How the heck we took that many, I have NO IDEA. It's going to take days to upload them to the photo website. Yikes. I can't wait to look at them with K-bot, and of course, pick some out to scrapbook! I think we're going to be talking about this trip for a long, L-O-N-G time!