Our First Family Vacation

We've been lots of places together, but this is our first official "vacation". We had such a fun trip. We left Tuesday and drove to Vegas where we stayed the night in the Stratosphere. The kids did amazingly well in the car for 6 hours. And in the morning, we drove the rest of the way to So. California. We drove to my hometown of Placentia and visited a few old friends there. I drove by my parents old house and my highschool. It was fun to remember where I spent my teenage years. We stayed in a hotel just a block from Disneyland. We got up early on Thursday morning, packed our snacks and walked to the Happiest Place on Earth! We had the funnest day together! Lukas was a bit overwhelmed, but was extatic to be able to ride twice in a row on the Astro Blasters BUZZ LIGHTYEAR ride. The park didn't seem too busy and we didn't have to wait in too many long lines. Some of our favorite rides were the Buzz ride, of course, the Nemo Submarine and Pirates of the Carribean. We saw the coolest Pixar Parade and saw all of Lukas' favorite characters. We were right in front! Max kept saying "Buzz, buzz, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo". We got our pictures taken with Buzz, although Lukas wasn't too sure he wanted to and Max absolutely did NOT want to, but we did anyway. We ran into some of my old college friends. Funny how there are thousands of people at Disneyland, but you always seem to find someone you know there. Small world. We called in early because we were exhausted and wanted to reserve our energies for the next day. We went to our hotel and went swimming and just relaxed. The next morning we met up with Pat's BF from highschool and his wife. We had an even more exhausting day with them and it was much more crowded! We did the Rider's Switch Pass which saved us time. Except on the Indiana Jones ride. It broke down and we were stuck in line FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!! I ran into Richard (a friend that I grew up with) and Pat ran into a high school friend. It's a Small World was closed for renovation (haha, you thought I was saying it's a small world again), so we didn't get to ride that, but we rode a ton of other rides. Lukas was just barely tall enough to ride the big rides and he had a blast on Star Tours and Splash Mountain. The Haunted Mansion was scary for him and he also was scared of Pirates, but he still loved it.

Whew...we did so much! And we had such a fun time with friends. I'm so glad we took time to go. I got to see my BF from high school and an old friend from college. We drove home Sunday and it felt like we'd never get home. Especially as we were driving through hot Nevada and we ran over a diesel tire that had been busted up. It loosened our bumper and about 30 minutes later, our tired completely blew out. Pat was amazing and changed it in 15 minutes!! We just wanted to get home after that. The kids did great, despite being stuck in the car for such a long day. We have happy memories to remember this wonderful vacation! (Pictures to come...)