Soundsational Summer

*Disclaimer- Our camera broke during this part of the trip so the pictures from here on out are taken with a camera phone and aren't the best.*

Chet's grandparents live in Placentia so whenever we go to Disneyland we try and make enough time to be able to see them. This visit we were able to spend a night with them. It takes about 2 hours to get to their house from Sea World so when we finally got there it was about 9 pm. They had 3 beds set up in the family room when we got there. Cheryl, Chet's grandma, had set up the 3rd bed so that she could sleep with the kids! They were so excited. We got everyone ready and tucked into bed at about 10:30. Cheryl had picked out a book that she used to read to her kids to read to Liv and Harris. Harris lasted about 2 seconds before he was out like a light.

Sleepover Central! Jazzy LOVES Liv and never left her side while we were there, even when she was sleeping.

After a good nights sleep we got up, got ready and had breakfast. Cheryl is an excellent cook and made french toast out of Hawaiian Bread! It was sooo good! We decided to hang out a bit longer after breakfast so the kids took this time to teach Papa Jay and Grandma Cheryl to play Wii bowling. Which is ironic because Jay and Cheryl were both professional bowlers and Cheryl was just inducted into the Pro Bowling Hall of Fame!

 Cheryl is an amazing woman and I am so grateful for her wonderful example to Liv.

We had a fantastic time staying with them and hope to do it again soon. The kids were so sad to leave that they cried! But, it was time to get to Disneyland! I was so excited to get there and see all of the new stuff that they were doing as part of the Soundsational Summer!

Because I have the most amazing husband in the whole world he booked us a suite in the new Frontier Tower overlooking the new pool area at the Disneyland Hotel! When we got there Goofy was hanging out at the bellhop desk. He came over and took Harris' sunglasses and put them on. Harris wasn't quite sure what to do at first but then when he gave them back he thought it was pretty funny.

Goofy being goofy with Harris.

After dropping off our luggage with the bellhop (it was too early to get into our room) we went inside and got checked in. While we were checking in Harris sat down to watch old school Disney cartoons when Chip showed up and decided to have a seat and hang out with him. It was one of those moments that make Disneyland magical!

Only at Disneyland...

While we were checking in, we got a pleasant surprise...special Fastpasses!  For people staying at a Disney Hotel they were giving out Fastpasses for the new Star Tours and Ariel rides! I was so excited for these because the average wait time for Star Tours was 3 hours and about half that for Ariel! We decided that our first ride would be Ariel!

Woohoo! Magic Fastpasses!

The line for Ariel was ridiculous, as I expected, but we walked to the front and showed them our Magic Fastpasses and got right on the ride!!! It was awesome!

The ride entrance

Harris wanted to ride with Liv so Chet and I actually got to ride on Ariel together!

Some of the things inside the ride.

The ride was darling! Even Harris liked it which was shocking because unless it Pi's or Big Thun he isn't interested. ;) After Ariel we left CA and went to Disneyland. We did all of our usuals except Big Thun which was closed for refurb. Which actually left a big hole in our schedule. Big Thunder is our "filler" ride. No matter what we can always get on it in about 15 minutes. Since we didn't have that as our "filler" between our other fastpasses we did a lot more standing in line than normal. That was ok though it gave us a chance to take some cute pictures waiting for our next ride.

"Waiting" in line for Pooh Bear, except I don't think we have ever actually "waited" for Pooh Bear.

I love to ride the Disneyland Railroad and take a grand circle tour of the park. It's a nice break and it's fun to scope out the less busy part of the park to head to when your tour is over. ;)

The train station in New Orleans Square is the best one. I love the atmosphere there.

Even though we know Disneyland like the back of our hand Harris always has to have a map to see where he wants to go next.

As we were walking to Fantasyland through Big Thunder Ranch we saw a giant alligator in the Rivers of America!

We did all our favorite rides in Fantasyland and ended the day with one of Harris recent favorites, Casey Junior.

The second day we got there early because the park was closing early for "Grad-night at the Park". So we wanted to get as much done as possible. We decided to start the day with Matterhorn and work our way around the park from there.

My cool boys.

I am a sucker for all of the rides in Fantasyland, much to the chagrin of my family. So after Matterhorn we went on one of my favorites, Storybook Land.  There is something magical about it being all in miniature.

My sweet boy with Alice's miniature village behind him

Me and my baby girl with the patchwork quilt and Cinderellas miniature castle in the background.

When we were done in Fantasyland we went to Toon Town. We never go to Toon Town, we hate it, but for some reason Harris wanted to go check it out. After walking around for about 5 minutes the kids were bored and wanted to go do something else. We thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to take a break from the park and head back to the hotel for a swim.

Weaklings! ;)

No matter how hard she tried she just couldn't get it to explode.

We took the monorail back to the hotel and got our suits on. I think the kids were more excited for the pool than anything else. It is a very cool pool, however, I will miss the Neverland Pool very much.

The pool is modeled after the original monorail station and the Disneyland sign that hung over it in 1955. The outside of the slides look the the monorail cars. It's fun to get a glimpse of the past.

Can you find my three? They are on their way up the stairs to the big slide in the back (the red monorail).

This is the "swimming pool". It is kind of small because the other half of it isn't done yet. And having a pool at our house the kids were much more interested in the slides.

Liv enjoying the waterfall

She thought that laying down under the waterfall might be more fun than just standing under it. She's so silly. :)

I couldn't zoom but this is Harris, on the left, and Chet, on the right, coming down the little slide.

We had a blast and stayed until the pool closed at 6 and then went back to our room and got ready to go back to the park. The park was closing early for Grad-Night again so we only had a couple hours. We went to California Adventure to get dinner at one of the new restaurants but they weren't open yet like I thought they were. Oh well, that meant that we got corndogs! ;) While we were eating our corndogs Chet went and got Fastpasses for ToT so when we were finished eating that's where we went. 

AT least Liv and Chet look like they are having fun. ;)

I asked Harris about his face in this picture and he said, "I really don't like Tower of Terror. I just go on it because Daddy and Liv want me to." Weather or not that is true I don't know but wouldn't surprise me if he didn't like it because it is the WORST ride in the whole world!

There wasn't a lot for us to do since the park was closing early so we did what we could and then went back to our fabulous room for a good nights sleep for one more day at Disneyland.

When you stay at one of the Disney Hotels they give you a packet of information about what is going on at the park that is just for the hotel guests. Chet was looking over the stuff and saw that they were letting the guests of the Disney Hotels into CA an hour early to ride the Ariel ride! Awesome, right? Well it would have been more awesome if we would have know that earlier so that we could have used all our magic Fastpasses on Star Tours. Oh well. We did go and got to ride Ariel twice in a row. When we finished on the ride we went over to Disneyland to spend our last day there. Since it was still quite early we did Indiana Jones and then Tarzan's Treehouse. I love the view from the top of the  treehouse. It is beautiful from up there.

Enjoying the view from the top

The problem with getting to the top is the bridge. Liv is deathly afraid of bridges. She has to go across by herself and practically runs. It's funny.

See Liv at the end of the bridge? She wouldn't even stand on it for a quick picture

The one thing I wanted to do on our last day there was see the parade. It was all new and I was really anxious to see if  they redeemed themselves from the atrocity they called a parade last year. They did. It was great!

The parade is called Mickey's Soundsational Parade. As the name implies it is all about the sound. All the floats are made to look like drums and the music matches the movie that the float is themed after. And since I have a slight obsession with Disney music, I LOVED IT!!!

This is the drum line that starts the parade. They are some of the drummers from the movie "Drum Line".

Mickey is the first float. He actually plays the drums and talks! Harris loved that.

The Ariel float

Loved the princess float!

Lion King

All of the floats were fantastic! I hope we get to see it next summer too! After the parade we had to wrap up our last day so that we could get on the road to our next stop on our PCH Road Trip, the central coast to see Chet's aunt and uncle...

There and Back Again

We recently went home to Utah to spend 16 days with our family. We played a lot, laughed a lot, ate a lot and relaxed a lot. It was sooo nice!

We had a very smooth drive getting there. It went by so fast! I think it went by so fast because of all the cool stuff that there is to see along the way. Our first major sighting was Chimney Rock. There is a road that you can take to get closer to it but we were anxious to get to Utah so we just stopped at the trail head to take a quick picture.



Chimney Rock

We saw several more places that we wanted to go see (Ship Rock and Angel Peak) but didn't stop at any until we got to Wilson Arch in Moab. (I have always wanted to go to Moab but it just not at the top of the list.) We did get out and attempt to climb up to Wilson Arch but we all had flip flops on which made it difficult on the slick rocks. I think that we will have to move it up the list and go back and do some hiking when we aren't in flip flops.



Wilson Arch

When we got to my sisters house we had some yummy Cafe Rio for dinner and then went for a walk at the nature preserve behind their house. When we got to the end of the path the kids wanted to throw rocks into the creek. They did that for a while until I showed them the culvert that went under the trail on one side and come out on the other. Then they started playing "Pooh Sticks". The littles thought it was so fun to see which branch would come out first.



Pooh Sticks

On Tuesday Chet had to go to work all week in Vail so the kids and I stayed at Lindsay's at night and Jann's during the day. It worked out great. We were able to spend lots of time with everyone that way.



Chet in Vail.
He actually did work very hard while he was there. Meetings from 7 am to 9 pm except on the last day when they got to play.

On Friday Chet left Vail and met us at the SLC airport and we headed to Disneyland! We had so much fun there because my dad came and so did my sister and her family. The cousins were so excited to do all the rides together. I was just happy to be with my favorite people at my favorite place. :)



The cute cousins waiting for Buzz



Everyones favorite ride Tower of Terror.
I love this picture! They all look like they are having so much fun.

Big Thunder with the Bigs. LOVE these kids!


We got to take the Littles on Small World while everyone else went on Space Mountain. They loved it! Aubry "danced" through the whole ride.



Sunday we were at the park by ourselves. It was a lovely day and we got to do all of our favorites.



My favorite ride, Splash Mountain. This was Liv's first time in the front. She was soaked before we even got to the big hill. She said it was scary but AWESOME!



Big Thunder is probably Liv and Harris favorite ride in Disneyland. Liv thinks it is funny to scream as loud as she can on this ride. I'm not sure why but it is pretty funny.



They had this cute photo spot outside of Toy Story Mania



On Saturday we took a break from Disneyland to go to Sea World. It was about 20 degrees cooler there than at Disneyland. It was so nice!



The Bay at the back of Sea World.



I know that I have said this before but Harris LOVES Shamu. He lights up when he gets to see him. I love to watch Harris watch Shamu. It brings tears to my eyes because of the joy it brings him. I hope that he always feels that way!



I have also said before that Harris' favorite show is River Monsters. He is fascinated by the enormous fish that the host, Jeremy Wade, catches. Needless to say, besides watching Shamu, the new Rivers section was Harris favorite part of Seaworld. The tank has 8' alligator gar, 6' red tailed catfish and will soon have arapaima. All of which have been featured on River monsters. We just sat and watched them all for about 30 minutes. The best part of that was when a little 3' alligator gar tried to take a bite of one of the giant silver dollars right in front of us! Harris thought that was great because we could see the gar's giant teeth.



The fish at the top is one of the giant Alligator Gar. You can't tell from this picture but that gar is between 8 and 9 feet long! The black fish with the white stripe actually has a red tail and thus is called a Red Tail Catfish, and he is about 5 or 6 feet long.

 We ended our day at Seaworld with another Shamu show, it was a great way to end a wonderful day.

After a very fun weekend with my family in Cali we headed back to Utah to be with Chet's family. It was a lot of fun for the kids because their cousins from Arkansas came to Utah to visit as well. We spent most of our time swimming in Papa and Grandma Wendy's pool but we did make time for a trip to the Dinosaur Museum and bowling at the new Jack and Jill's in Lehi. Chels and I even sneaked away for a little Anniversary Sale shopping. :)

Liv has always loved to dance with her Papa. It's not exactly dancing. It's mostly Chet Sr. holding Liv while he twirls and tosses her around.  On this trip Liv discovered that they could dance in the pool. It is really cute to watch them although Papa is usually exhausted by the end of their "session".





Papa and Liv "dancing" in the pool.




Harris "dancing" with Papa, Liv and uncle James waiting for their turn.

 We had a great time at the Dinosaur Museum. I mean who wouldn't have fun seeing giants, damming a flood and digging for fossils.



Liv is apparently going to be eaten by the Carcaradon Megaldon while Harris sits idly by...



All the cousins and uncle James trying to stop the floods.

 On our last day in Utah we took some family pictures with Chet's family. Which was our second attempt because on the first attempt Harris got really sick and was throwing up most of the night. Fortunately he got better and we were able to get some cute pics. Besides posed shots Wendy wanted wanted some candids as well. She decided that a water balloon fight with 200 water balloons was the perfect way to get those candids. Everybody had so much fun. Harris got Chet smack in the face and Liv, being the only girl, took quite a few shots as well. It was a blast to watch.



This pose was Chet's idea. He said it was like Splash Mountain. It's kinda silly but it turned out pretty cute. 




Uncle Nate got Liv good with the water from the balloons that popped in the bucket.

We had a great time in Utah and Cali with all of our family. I am so grateful that Chet is able to provide us with the ability to travel often. It makes living far away from everyone a little easier knowing that it won't be long until we get to see them again.

Spring Break

Two weeks ago we were able to go to Disneyland for spring break. I know that I have said that Christmas is my favorite time to be at Disneyland but I was wrong. There is something about springtime there, it's amazing. Living in Utah it seems like winter may never end but when you get to Disneyland you realize that there is still hope for good weather. It's warm and sunny and happy, not cold and cloudy and depressing. I think that my favorite thing to do while I am there is point out all the different kinds of flowers. My mom had an amazing green thumb (she got yard of the week in Orem 3 years in a row!) and was always telling me the different kinds of flowers whenever we would go anywhere. Seeing and knowing all these flowers makes me feel close to my mom and I know its cheesey but I hope one day Olivia and Harris will be somewhere and recognize a flower that I have pointed out and know what it is.

Harris was so funny this trip. He abbreviated everything! So here are the kids on Mr. Toad, Pooh Bear and Casey Jun Jun. I didn't get a pic of him on his favorite ride Pi's aka Pirates. Haha! Silly boy. We did actually get to do Casey Junior twice this trip! We haven't done this ride in years because the line is forever long but because we were there during the week it was pretty slow.

Since there are 4 of us we take turns with each other on the rides. Usually these are the two rides we end up doing the most ; Splash and "Autop". Splash is my favorite and Autopia is the kids favorite especially at night.

The last few times we have been to Disneyland my dad has come with us. I was sad this time that he wasn't going to be able to be there because we were going during the week. Well Wednesday morning he called and asked us what ride were on. I told him that we hadn't quite made it to the park yet but we were on our way. After I hung up I thought that was a weird phone call and then it donned on me "He's Here!". Sure enough when we walked into the park there he was leaning against a light post waiting for us. I was so glad he came the kids were too. They immediately started fighting over who got to go on what rides with him. It was a great surprise!

This is poor Harris on our way back to the Disneyland Hotel on the last night. He was so sad. He cried all the way back to the hotel that he "wished we lived at Disneyland". It broke my heart. Usually the kids are fine with leaving because they know that we will be back sooner rather than later. I think that he wanted to stay because it is a familiar place to him and New Mexico where we were headed "home" to was still very unfamiliar. Thankfully after a good nights sleep (and we promised we already had the next trip back booked.) he was fine with going "home".

 Goodbye Disneyland until next time!