California Trip part 2 (finally)

The more time I have to think about our trip the more I long to go back.

One tradition that my side of the family has had for about the last 9 years is going to Disneyland...It seems we can't go to California without going to our favorite place. There truly is something for EVERYONE there. I dont' know how much longer our family will be able to keep up this tradition with how fast our family is growing, plus I don't want to spoil my kids, but I totally enjoy every single time we go. Mitchell will ride everything that his height will allow...Braden on the other hand gets a bit nervous. So this time we decided that we would talk him into going on all the rides before we got there. Well, we were having our family prayer and Mitchell prayed; "Please bless that Braden won't be scared to ride the big boy rides." Oh the faith of a child. Braden did ride all the rides and had a blast. He thanked Mitchell for praying for him.

One of the highlights of the day is that my family (all 18 of us...even the babies) won Disney Dream Fast Passes. We got off of the Pinnochio ride (2nd ride of the day) and they were standing there handing out passes that get us on all the rides with little to no wait. You should have seen us grown people screaming and jumping around. Now if you know my family you would understand that we are crazy about figuring out ways not to wait. I think we have more fun figuring out how to avoid lines than actually riding the rides so these passes were really a dream come true. They even got us into California adventure for free.

There were tonz of other cool things about this day, but I will only tell three more...

Camden is HILARIOUS. He was taking a small nap and I thought that instead of riding rides that we would go and watch the parade. He woke up right as the parade was starting. He loves everything Disney. We happened to be a place on the parade route where there is only spectators on one side of the street and it just happened that Cam and Joss were the only kids under the age of 13 in that area. Well, you know Disney...they are supposed to play it up to the kids. I wish I could have captured that kids face. He still believes that the parade was just for him. Every character came right up to him and waved and stopped 1 foot in front of where he was sitting. He was beside himself with excitement. He still talks about "my palade"!

So Stu hates getting wet so he thinks it would be a great idea to have everyone take their shirts off (boys only of course) for the picture coming down splash mountain...guess who was first to rip their shirt off... you guessed it Mitch!

Well to make a long story short, they stopped the ride and made sure everyone put there shirts back on. I can't stop laughing about Stu actually thinking that this would be a good idea!

Last but not least all the in-laws (except Sarah) and my mom took the kids home at around 8:30pm which left just my dad, me, Kara, and my brothers to run from ride to ride like little kids till the park closed. It was a blast. We stopped to get snacks for the ride and had fun visiting all the way back to the beach house.