preface to the Disneyland Blog

Ok so i am still getting used to this blogging thing and it is driving me nuts with how it looks while i'm composing it and even in preview and how it actually turns out on the page....i'm sorry that the captions i made for each picture did not show up next to the actual pictures, i can't even get it to leave the gaps between paragraphs or pictures, if anyone has any way to help me i'd really appreciate getting better at using this thing!!

Disneyland - a little more catch up!

May 9-16, 2009....Disneyland....wow, where to begin?! We have so many great pictures, it was an all around amazing week! For starters, we were staying at the time share condo that my mom has and it was AWESOME!! It had a living room/dining room, full kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a small balcony and a GREAT view of the fireworks at Disneyland. So the first day we got there we had left a bit late and really taken our time driving, stopping often for the kids to get out and stretch and eat, andthen we hit some SERIOUS Los Angeles traffic and what according the GPS should have taken us about 1 hour, took us more than 3 hours. So we arrived at somewhere around 8pm. The staff was very helpful to bring our things up the room as i was trying to corral the kids and Adam couldn't get everything in one load by himself. We were on the 9th floor (out of 15 floors) so from our sliding door we could clearly see the "Matter Horn" and "Space Mountain" as well as the giant Ferris Wheel at California Adventures. The kids were excited to be able to see a part of Disneyland even though we weren't going into the park until the next day. The next day was Mother's day, and Adam made pancakes and bacon (the kids call this 'special breakfast') for everyone, especially me and my mom. My mom and her husband (the kids call him Boppy Lou, because his name is Louis) and my brothers Ben (10) and Sam (9) were in the room right next door, she had called ahead to make sure they could accomodate us. That was nice, so we each got an extra key card to our room and traded so that we could easily access each others units, that was fun. Louis had gotten injured the day before we all left and his foot was bandaged up and he was pretty heavily medicated. He was a trooper though, never really heard him complain the whole time! There were lots of special fun things that happened but i'll tell them as i show pictures of them and that should pretty much tell the story of our week :)












Maggie loved the dumbo ride, when she finally went on it, but that's a whole different blog altogether!











Maggie finally got pooped out, this picture was too cute to pass up!

!!!Princesses!!!!


















































this was the Jedi Training Academy and my brother Sam got picked out the audience to participate. He got to fight Vader and Maul and he was the only one who force pushed the storm troopers, it was pretty fun to watch, he is now officially a padawan.













Meeting Mickey and Minnie was fun for the kids, we met them at their houses in ToonTown, we had to wait in line for each one and i snapped a few fun pictures of them in line and in the houses too!















































Now this was an interesting story. This little girl is named Isabelle Bautista. Her dad is Elaine's pediatric dentist, right here in Modesto. We happened to run into him in line for the princess vanity faire. he was holding the spot with his daughter Isabelle. Elaine and Isabelle became instant friends and as it turns out their birthdays are only a day apart and they both attend the same dance school and would be performing in a dance together in only a few short weeks! Crazy, it really is a "small world after all."



This was one of those special moments we had, Maggie and Lainey were both picked to dance in the parade with the characters, they had a blast, got to dance around all over and be a part of the fun. it was definitely memorable!!















Can you find Maggie in the first picture and Elaine in the second....look closer!!



























Posing in toon town, having a blast playing with Everything!!!
































































Every time we passed this statue of the White Rabbit, the girls had to stop and check him out, they really seemed to like it......this is the girls on the tea cups, we all rode it together and they had a blast! So did we, and amazingly no one got sick!




















Another great moment. We had been standing in line and were picked to open the park that day! They took a picture of us in front of the whole crowd of people waiting to get in, then a picture of us in the park before anyone else! then the girls got to push THE button announcing the park was opening, it was quite a special moment, they introduced us to the whole crowd and made a pretty big deal of it. We felt special and that's one of those moments we may never have again so we loved it!































knock knock...at the white rabbit's house, anyone home?

Tinkerbell didn't think it was fair that Katie couldn't be in the picture because she was sleeping, so she walked Elaine and Maggie over to the stroller and had us take this picture, it was so cute and sweet! We really liked the new Pixie Hollow at Disneyland, it was fun meeting the different fairies.

The last two pictures were taken while Elaine was on Splash Mountain, Maggie was a hair away from being tall enough but she was excited to meet a few characters instead. The great thing was that their favorite rides were Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and the Matter Horn, they totally loved the Matter Horn, they both rode it 4 times, crazy thing though was that Katie was only about 3 inches away from being tall enough for that ride too! CRAZY! They were real sports when it came to scary rides, they rode Star Tours and the Matter Horn and Splash Mountain, and were a little afraid the first time but i continually explained that every ride was safe if they stayed sitting in their seat and stayed buckled, after the first couple of rides they began to realize that it was true and they then LOVED every ride they went on! They even did Soarin' Over California in California Adventures. Katie was too little for a lot of rides but luckily she was able to ride all the kid rides which the other girls loved too. Katie is going to be a dare devil like her sisters, she was so excited for every ride she was able to go on...no fear whatsoever! She grabbed onto the bar or whatever was holding her (sometimes it was only our arms) and she grinned most of the time! This was such an amazing experience getting to take our girls to Disnyeland at this age, each age will bring new adventures and joys, we can't wait to go again!!

a little behind....time to catch up! - Wheel of Fortune

ok, for those of you who are waiting to hear when i'll be on wheel of fortune i'm afraid i've got sad news... not gonna happen this time. I got a call back and was really psyched to go and interview personally with the producers and show them why i would ROCK on "wheel." Well they made us go through several elimination rounds in which, while playing the game with other people, we were narrowed down based on personality and attitude. Not surprisingly i made it past that with flying colors. Then we played some more wheel, and more and MORE. by the final round of eliminations and games i was so frazzled from all the different puzzles (which i think was their goal) when i took a turn in the final round i guessed a letter that had already been guessed. Now you might think, oh well, people do that on the show all the time. While that is totally true, they are looking for any excuse to not like you, and unfortunately that is a big one. They tell us over and over to use the "used letter board" which tells you which letters are available and which have already been picked and i knew this very well from the millions of rounds of wheel we had already been playing. But i was so sure on one of the words which i thought had a T in it, so i guessed T without even looking at the "used letter board," apparently i wasn't the only person who had thought that, but i was the one eliminated for it, because i guessed it without looking at the totally obvious board in front of me telling me it was NOT available. I think they figure you must not really be paying attention if you guess a letter that clearly in front of you is not available. While they can't do anything about that happening on the show, they do everything they can to prevent it, including disqualifying would-be contestants for doing it. Anyway, i didn't get picked to be on "Wheel of Fortune," i was so annoyed with myself that day and a few days after that, but luckily it was not long until we were leaving for Disneyland, the distraction reminded me that my family was more important than any opportunity to be on a show or win big bucks (or not) could be. But you can bet if that Wheel-Mobile is ever in the area again, i'll be there!!! I'm young, got plenty of years to practice and try again!