A Magical week

At the beginning of November we decided to take a last minute trip to California to go to the most magical place on Earth, Disneyland. I really love to take my kids here. Last year when we went we spent a little over a week doing a lot of the California parks and it burned us out. This year we kept it really simple. We did two days in Disneyland and 1 day at Knotts Berry Farm.

I have to say that this year things were perfect at Disneyland. Perfect weather+ short lines+happy kids=happy parents. Claire was tall enough for all the rides except for two which made her so happy. It was such a big deal last year to be too short for some of the rides so this year she was a "big girl". She LOVED the fast rides the most and asked to go on a fast ride all the time. Her favorite ride was either Space Mountain or Star Tours. I think we rode Space Mountain at least 8 times during the 2 days we were there.

Maelyn and Jaden were also very happy the whole time while being at Disneyland. Maelyn is just a happy camper no matter what so she was just excited to do anything. Last year we had some resistance from Jaden about going on rides for Claire but this year he was so much better about taking a little time to do something that Claire wanted to do. Just a warning, I only got a couple pictures of Jaden. He really doesn't like having his picture taken right now (surprise, surprise).

We didn't spend a ton of time with the Disneyland characters this year because Claire didn't really care so much. If we saw a character and it had a short line, she would want to go see them. I gave her the choice of going to see the Princesses or to go on rides and she chose the rides. That tells you how much she loved the rides.

Here are a few pictures of Claire while I took her on some of the fantasy land rides (Snow white, Pinocchio, Alice, tea-cups, etc)

Rides that everyone loved were Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Tower of Terror, Star Tours, California Screaming (minus Claire), and the Haunted Mansion. We went on these rides multiple times and loved every minute of it. One of Jaden's favorites was Toy Story Mania which I guess is no surprise because that ride is like a video game within a ride. Maelyn's favorite ride was California Screaming which is the same as last year.

Something new for us this time at Disneyland was Tom Sawyer's island. We had extra time since the lines were so short and we wanted to try something new so we headed to explore the island. The kids had a blast and it was a nice little break from riding rides. I even got a few more pictures of Jaden even though he wasn't happy about it so I threatened him and he let me :)

Here are a few pictures of us on a couple rides. The quality isn't great because it is a picture of a picture on a preview screen. The first one is on the Tower of Terror and the second is on Space mountain.

Man, looking at all these Disneyland pictures really makes me want to go again right now. I really love that place. It is a magical place and you really don't realize how magical until you go to another theme park right after going to Disneyland. After two days at Disneyland we decided to go to Knotts Berry Farm. Lets just say the whole thing was a bust. It decided to rain on the last day and we debated at what to do. Go to Knotts, go home early, or bum around town. After a lot of discussion we decided to go to Knotts since we had already planned on going. The rain had stopped by that point and we headed out. After getting to the park and spending 1 hour there, it had started to rain again. Not just a little rain, a lot of rain. They decided to close all the rides. We were furious!!!! Before the rain had started I already thought the park was terrible (run down rides, dirty, nothing much for 4 year olds to do) but when they shut the rides down, I had steam coming out my ears. We decided to ask for a refund and they weren't going to give us one but my sweet talking hubby did a great job of getting our money back. I really wouldn't recommend this park to people but I know some others that enjoyed it. I guess Disneyland spoiled me :)

Here are 2 pictures I got at Knotts Berry Farm

So after leaving the rained out Knotts we headed to our hotel to dry out and then we went to a movie instead. Overall it was a good day because we were able to relax a little before our drive back to Utah. It really was a magical week. I love going on vacation!