Disneyland, part one!

What a trip!  I am exhausted, but it was worth it.  The kids had a blast, and it was even better watching them have a blast.  When we got there we checked in to our hotel, which was nice and very close to the park.  There was a great pool, with waiters who could come and bring us drinks and food.  Sounds relaxing, huh?  Not really with two kids three and under.  Justin and I were kept busy trying to prevent Ruby from walking into the pool.  That night we went into Downtown Disney, which is just an outdoor mall right next to Disneyland.  There was a gigantic Disney store where we told Ramona she could pick something out.  Unfortunately, she found the princess dresses, which are 65 bucks!  So, we spent the whole shopping trip avoiding the area where the dresses were.  We went to dinner where there was a woman making balloon creations, and Ramona asked her to make a princess wand.  When she made it for Ramona, she was ecstatic.  We hadn't even been to Disneyland yet, and Ramona was stoked.

The next morning we went to Disneyland bright and early, and Ramona was most excited about the Sleeping Beauty castle.  She kept telling us that we needed to go there first.  We took a picture of her in front of the castle, and then went inside.  When I was a kid the castle was closed, so it was fun to be able to go inside.  That said, there isn't much in there, just the story of sleeping beauty.  Ramona found it a little scary (maybe we'll wait to show her that movie till she is older).  When we got out, we looked at Ruby just to see that one of her shoes is missing.  We had literally been at the park for five minutes.  We looked everywhere, but it seemed to have disappeared.  Our own little Cinderella.  I was pretty irritated, since those were my favorite little European shoes.

The next thing we went to was to meet the princesses, which was Ramona's favorite part.  She got to meet Belle, Ariel, and Tiana.  Belle was a real pro, she was able to get Ruby to come and sit on her lap (Ruby was a little scared of all people wearing costumes).  They were all really good with the kids, Ramona was in a total Princess trance.

After the princesses, we stayed in Fantasyland for a while.  We went on "Its a Small World", Storybook land boats, and Dumbo.  Then we went on the train the goes around Disneyland, and it was nice to rest our legs.  When we got back to the train station, there just happened to be a princess story time.  Cinderella told the story of, um, Cinderella, which Ramona loved. 

Then we wandered into Toontown, which is really as lame as I remember it.  We did get to meet Mickey, whom Ramona wasn't that excited to meet, but when she saw him she seemed pretty taken.  He did bust us for Ruby being barefoot though.  We had bought her some Minnie Mouse flip flops to replace the missing shoe, but they wouldn't stay on. After this, we all needed some lunch, so we went to the Hungry Bear Restaurant, which we had seen from the train, and it looked really peaceful.  We sat right above the water, and had some food that was much better than I remember Disneyland food being (fried green tomato sandwich!).  Then we decided to walk over to California Adventure, which is where both kids fell asleep.  What do you do when both of your kids fall asleep at California Adventure?  You have a beer, of course.  Thank god C.A. has booze, since Disneyland does not. 

I wasn't that impressed with California Adventure (besides the booze part), there were a lot of rides that looked pretty cool, but the whole park didn't feel anywhere near as cohesive as Disneyland.  We met a few characters, played in some water in "Bugs Land" (it was really hot, upper 80's), then we walked back to the hotel to rest and go swimming.  We were pretty exhausted, I think we were all asleep by 9:30.