Last Fall Rob and I were talking about how much fun it was for our family when we went to Disneyland. I mentioned that Nate is getting older and won’t want to go on the kiddie rides much longer and how Madeleine is pretty much out of the princess phase. I convinced him that we should take the kids one more time before they grow out of this precious time of their life where fantasy and imagination is reality. You know, before the magic ends. It didn’t take much convincing 🙂 We decided that if we could swing it we’d go again in the spring.

Since we didn’t know for quite a while if we’d be going, we kept it secret from the kids. Then once we knew, we decided to continue the secret and surprise them. It was so hard! We both slipped up a couple of times but they never caught on.

This year we also decided to invite Rob’s parents to come along. It was so fun doing Disney with kids so we thought it’d be great for them to have that experience with their grandkids. We also knew our kids would LOVE spending so much time with their Grandma and Grandpa Snow.

We told Nate and Madeleine that we were going to Phoenix (to account for the two days of driving). We weren’t sure how far we’d get before Nate read a road sign but the dvd player and iPad kept his eyes from wandering. We also made sure we didn’t stop at the same place we stopped on the way as last time.

Finally, we got to Anaheim. Rob and I were so nervous! We’d waited so long for this surprise! We drove straight to Downtown Disney but the entrance we went in last year was closed so we had to park and enter a different way, which I think threw off the kids. The reveal wasn’t spectacular. Maybe I could’ve amped it up by doing some grand gesture? Instead I tried to just get them to figure it out on their own. Haha. Oh, well. It was still fun. Link

So in Downtown Disney we wandered and played and ate dinner before we went to our hotel across the street. Fun stuff.

 

Nate’s car won, of course!

 

 

 

 

And here are a couple of pictures from my phone that I forgot to put in my last post. This was Barstow on the way down. Admittedly, I was frustrated. I had originally wanted to go to California in February when it was miserably cold here in Utah and 80 degrees down there. Instead, we waited until May so that we’d be sure to have great weather, especially for the beach. Well, we got out of the car in Barstow and it was cold and windy. The last thing I wanted to do while in the desert was wear a jacket! I had been FREEZING for the last 6 months, after all! Ironically, back home it was 90 degrees. Blah.