Hey, let's take a vacation... day 4 and 5

I think it would be an understatement to say that the circus was excited to go to Mexico. In fact, the whole thing to them was, "We're going to Mexico" or "When we go to Mexico..."
We had more than enough paperwork to get ourselves on board (the lady joked with us and asked if we were applying for jobs), but that's better than the rest of my family who, for some reason, didn't even bring the bare necessity, the one and only thing we needed, birth certificates. My poor dad was s-t-r-e-s-s-e-d. No worries. They all eventually got on.
We had windows in our cabin (so cool).

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. But we did get an elephant after dinner.

We woke up the next morning to Catalina Island.

We had to ferry over.

And we snorkeled. The water was fah-fah-fah-freezing. It took literally a very long 5 minutes before I got used to it. But once it got comfortable feeling, it was bliss. I love water. I love sun. I love beach. I love my family.

After that the kids had some activities in the kid camp on the cruise ship that they wanted to do, except Brynn, who wanted to tour the island some more with West and me.

Another great two picture sequence:

Brynn! Didn't you read the sign? We're not in Disneyland anymore...

That's better.

We drove up to see the Wrigley monument:

And finished up with the "scenic" drive with the golf cart.

The island had only golf carts, except the few smart cars we saw. The garages were tiny.

Cali was thoroughly exhausted by dinner. She even slept through dessert. Dessert? None for her.

Hey, let's go on vacation... day 3

We got up bright and early, ate breakfast at the hotel (we love Holiday Inn Express for this reason) and walked to the happiest place on Earth. You know what? I believe that it is.

I may or may not have been REALLY excited. I may or may not have gotten us there an hour before the gates opened. We may or may not have seen a lady trip over a crack in the pavement and break her arm I kid you not. Don't you worry, the happy employees of The Mouse, who were wearing uniforms straight out of a Mickey Mouse cartoon helped her.

Holding our place in line... sorry guys, I was really excited and really wanted to get there...

But don't you worry, we made it inside, used our generic fast track passes, and rode every ride of our desire. And guess what? We only had tears on ONE ride. Splash Mountain. We made them go anyway. If you'll remember, last time we went to Disneyland we had tears on EVERY ride, so much so, that a ride conductor gave Tay a flashlight on the Snow White ride. THE SNOW WHITE ride!

This year was much better.

And Cas and Tay bought super cute mini mad hatter hats.

We took a lot of pictures in Toon Town while we were killing time for our Roger Rabbit ride fast passes to time out.

I love this one ha ha:

We went inside Mickey's house:

And we had no idea, but going into Mickey's house is deceiving, that which looks fairly small, went on and on and on... until suddenly there we were, primping to meet The Mouse himself:

I'm just thankful I'm not the only one with this problem:

Why is it that every time we go to Disneyland, our kids end up passed out on the pavement?

But it was oh so worth it. We watched "Fantasmic" and I just can not give it justice. I was cussing that I had to take pics on my phone. You need to go see this show!

The pirate ship came out of nowhere and fired a canon shot, no one was paying attention to it coming and the crowd collectively ducked. It was awesome!

That's a life size Mickey there... which means that dragon from Sleeping Beauty that was blowing real fire every where was HUGE.

My favorite detail of the show? The black and white Mickey driving the steamboat... Steamboat Willie!

When can we go again?