Disney: Day 3

The fortunate timing of our trip to Disneyland (going on a MTW after the Halloween weekend) allowed us to experience all the attractions and rides with very few lines.  It was delightful.  And fun.  And we only used one Fastpass the entire trip.  And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to go at any other time. 

Wednesday was our "Favorites" day.  We started out at Toy Story Mania as soon as it opened and rode it twice to get our fill.  We rode a few more of our favorites and went over to Turtle Talk with Crush.  Isaac got to talk with Crush.  Crush named him "Intense" Isaac and then asked to talk with his father figure.  A snippet of their conversation:

Crush: What's your name?
Zach: Zach.
Crush: Ohhhhh, Zippin Zach.  How many little squirts do you have, dude?
Zach: Four.
Crush: They keep you busy?
Zach: Yep.
Crush:  I know what you mean.  I have 56.

All in all a very happy day. 

Kye and Lucy:

 Crush:

 On Wed. morning, I stopped to take a picture of a family and noticed that it was the family of a friend from my home stake in South Dakota.  (With so few youth growing up, we were incredibly close as a stake youth group.)  Erin and her brother Brian were good, good friends, and we missed them when they moved away to Missouri.  It was good to catch up.  And slightly weird that we ran into each other at Disneyland after 17 years. 

Erin and me:

 Kye and Lucy, Jedi apprentices:

 Adam in Toon Town:

 Please allow me to point out my incredibly overwhelming geekiness.  Not only am I wearing a fanny pack (gasp!) but I rolled up my pants because it was so dang hot.  A pinnacle of fashion, that's me.  (But the fanny pack thing was so stinking convenient and much lighter than my camera bag.)  And it was soooo hot.  Did I mention that?  Lucky things my kids are still too young to be embarrassed by me yet. 

 Meeting Mickey:

 Jail time--Kye and Lucy:

 Tea cups: I was so glad for the excuse not to ride.  The only time I rode on a tea cup ride, I had to walk right over to the garbage can and . . . well, you know.  The rest of the family seemed to enjoy it, though.

 Whenever we saw a character, Adam was the first to high tail it the other way.  So imagine my surprise when we ran into Minnie on Main Street and he actually wanted to get a a picture with her.  There was no line, so we got a picture AND an autograph.

 Watching the Celebrate! parade.  The 3 older kids got to go out and dance and do the bunny hop.  Videos later.  Adam preferred to stay close to the dad.

As we walked back to the hotel for the last time, Kye draped himself over a bench by the buses and declared himself too exhausted to walk another step.  Impressively, it was the first time we had heard any such thing from any of the kids for those 3 days.  They were troopers.  (I may have mentioned it myself a time or two, but I'll never tell.)

We had a great time.  It was so nice to spend that time with the kids.  When we left the hotel on Thursday morning, I tried to convince Zach we should spend the day at the beach and head back on Friday instead.  Didn't work.  We got home on Thursday night and the kids spent all day Friday catching up on homework.  There was a LOT of homework.  So much, in fact, I thought it was a little ridiculous.  But we survived and we're now back to our routine.  Yay for Disneyland!