Disneyland!... Again

So, it's true. We just made our third trip to Disneyland in the last 13 months! What can I say, we're Disneyland sort of people. Ryan's brother called on Memorial Day and said they were heading to Southern Cali the next week with their little family and asked if we'd like to come. We debated for like a day and then decided it would be a fun family vacation! We've been considering a vacation this year and couldn't decide what to do, so this decided it for us. We spent 4 days in Disneyland and were officially Disney-ed out by the end of it. I took hardly any pictures though. It just didn't seem to come up much. But I got a few. I realized though that Ryan never made it into any of the pictures! We spent a lot of time apart, actually, because Bella was tall enough to ride on most of the big kid rides, but Evan was not. So Evan and I hung out together and Bella and Ryan spent a lot of time with Brad, Kristina and Kaelee going on cool rides.

We saw Mary Poppins first thing when we got in the park. Bella wanted to see her really bad, so we waited. As soon as we got up there, she clammed up and refused to even look up for the picture!

Bella, consulting the map for our next adventure...
Bella actually took this, which was pretty impressive. Otherwise I wouldn't have made it into too many pictures either.
Bella caught me red-handed finishing up her chocolate milk!
The carousel...
Bella insisted I take a picture of Piggy riding the carousel! He had so much fun.
On our last day, after offering to go see Rapunzel a hundred times, Bella suddenly decided that that's all she wanted to do. The line was INSANE! I stood there for an hour and a half, holding Bella while she slept for about an hour of it. So I was exhausted and weary by the time we got there, but Bella was all rested up and super excited to see Rapunzel. She was just disappointed that "her boy" (Flynn) wasn't there too.
Bella on the Casey Jr. train...
We went to the Princess Coronation over in the Fantasyland theatre. They have places to kind of run around and take pictures before it starts. I suddenly found Bella wrapped up in the decor laying on the ground! I think she was a little tired by the last day.
So that was Disneyland. It was a really fun family trip and we were really glad we got to go.

I also never posted these pictures. I took a trip downtown a few weeks ago with my two cousins and their kids. We went to the fairly new kids exhibit at the Church History Museum. The kids LOVED it and we ended up playing for almost 2 hours. They had this whole thing about the early spanish who settled here or something, and the kids could dress up in this mexican garb and dance around. Evan was a crack-up in his little vest and hat! Here he is with Hannah in her pretty dancing skirt...
This area was definitely the biggest hit for Bella. She could've stayed there all day dressed up in a skirt dancing. They even had a big mirror so the kids could watch themselves dance, which just turned into Bella checking herself out for an hour!
The kids outside, running around...
We made several attempts to get them all together for a picture. It's hard to get 5 kids 5 and under to hold still for a few seconds! This was as close as we got...
There was a group picture of all of us, but it wasn't on my camera so I need to get a copy of that. My cousins had to leave to get their kids naps. I had promised Bella that while we were down there we could go see the big Jesus in the visitor's center, so we walked over to Temple Square and played around for a little while.
It was about 3:00 while we were sitting at the reflection pool, so I texted Ryan and asked him if he wanted us to stick around for a couple hours and then we could meet up and have dinner all together downtown. He said that'd be great, so we had some time to kill. I decided I'd take them over to the Beehive house and do that tour. While we were heading up the pathway on Temple Square from the reflection pool to go to the Beehive house, a little golf cart thing came toward us and who do you think was in it?? That's right, President Monson went puttering right by us. He smiled and said hi, and I sort of stood there staring like an idiot!! It was pretty cool though. Not something that happens every day for sure! After the Beehive house, we went to the top of the Church Office Building, played around in the visitor's center, and visited some of the fountains on Temple Square. We met up with Ryan and went to the Gateway for dinner then headed home. It was such a fun day with the kids. Evan didn't get his nap, but you would've never known it. He was so good and they were so well behaved all day. It was one of those perfect days with my kids that made me so glad to be a mom and grateful that I'm able to go spend fun days like that with them. I hope they're as good next time we do that so my good feelings aren't crushed! Anyway, until next time...