Jeannette and Glen's Family: Family Vacation

Hindsight is 20/20 and we definitely learned some things from this trip. As I mentioned, we stayed up in Big Bear, California which is a beautiful town up in the mountains and a great place to visit, if you're going to stay there. Besides having the timeshare there and the one in Anaheim being booked, we felt like it was a good option because we would be going down to Anaheim two days, but then we would be going down to Victorville and the Apple Valley area the next two days, which is just about 45 minutes down the other side of the mountain. In theory it works, but after a long day at Disneyland, it was not an enjoyable trip back up the mountain. The kids fell asleep in the car pretty quickly, but every time we made a stop (which with as tired as Glen was, we had to do a few times) the kids woke up. Ella and Ammon fed off of each other's misery and cried most of the way back.

Friday morning we headed back down the mountain to go to Disneyland again and this time the trip proved too much for Ammon. Glen says that every time we go on a vacation one of our kids has to throw up in the car and this time it was Ammon. Luckily this is one thing we have learned from the past and I was ready with a tub and was able to catch most of it. We also had a couple two liter bottles of water and plenty of paper towels, so clean up wasn't that bad except for being on the side of a busy California freeway. Skip to the end of the day and I was not looking forward to the drive back up the mountain, it went better, but the big thing we learned; if you're going to Disneyland, stay in a hotel close to Disneyland, period.

Our second day at Disneyland went quite differently from the first and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot more. We knew exactly where we wanted to go and with help from cousin Julie, who met us there, it was less chaotic than the day before. Not to mention that I didn't allow any bathroom incidents to foul us up. Because Ella and Ammon had to wait for a couple hours the night before while Isaac rode some big rides, we headed to Fantasy Land first. We happened across some Princesses as we first got into the park, but Ella wasn't giving in completely and wasn't too excited about having her picture taken with Sleeping Beauty. My daughter is a nut. Luckily she had a great time on the carousel, Dumbo, the train, and Peter Pan. Isaac also had fun although after the excitement of Space Mountain, he was a little bored. He and Glen were the only ones to brave the teacups which was fun to watch. Ammon had warmed up considerably to the idea of Disneyland and was pretty good about getting onto most rides, except for Dumbo. He kept pointing at the Dumbo's while we were in line and saying, "No fly, no fly." I was a little nervous, but I thought he'd be ok. Boy was I wrong. It was a total struggle to get him strapped in with me and though I should have opted out at that point, I thought he'd be excited once the ride started. Wrong. He screamed the whole time. "Yes, look at me, the big pregnant woman forcing her toddler onto a ride he doesn't like." Wave, wave.

We also figured out a trick to avoid buying so much food in the park, which yes is really expensive. We ate a late breakfast outside of the park, brought lots of healthy snacks to get us through to a late lunch in the park and then we did buy one snack later in the day in the park, the pineapple whips from outside the Tiki Room which weren't too expensive and soooo good. Dinner was at Mimi's Cafe after we left the park and met up with the rest of the family who we hadn't seen much.

We did allow the second day to be the shopping day and while Isaac checked out the knight store with Glen, I took Ella to the Princess store. She immediately raced to the beautiful yellow Belle dress, that ironically her cousin Grace had bought earlier that day, and refused to look at anything else. It took a great deal of prodding and explaining that she only had $20.00 to spend and the dress was too much, but I managed to avoid a total meltdown and she finally settled on a bracelet, some rings, a coloring book, and princess twist crayons. Phew. Isaac and Ammon ended up with guns from the Buzz Lightyear store after we rode that again. (this was Ella's favorite ride). And we were able to make a quick stop over at California adventure just to go on Monsters Inc. The other thing we learned, plan for three days at Disneyland, two really isn't enough. Though we were able to ride quite a few things and see a lot, there was more we would have liked to see and do. Now we can say we have done the Disneyland thing and our kids will have to wait until they are all bigger (we figure the youngest needs to be at least six or seven) until we go again.