We are back!

Home sweet home. I have a lot of writing to do! And a LOT of pictures. Stay tuned!!!

Planning planning planning!

We are going to Califonia!

We have a wedding coming up. For a friend I have known all my life. (No really, Our parents were friends before we were born, and we have been friends ever since) She's having a destination wedding in California! Since I am a bridesmaid in the wedding obviously we were going.

The way Dave's work schedule works, he is flown to and from work, but only on his scheduled days. If he needs extra time off, he can take the entire 2 weeks off or pay for his own flight back up to work. So, he has his scheduled week off, his 2 weeks of work off, then another scheduled week off. So, 4 weeks off.

The wedding fell in the middle of his work weeks, so we just figured, hey, if we have 4 weeks off we may as well do Disneyland while we are right there. (the wedding is just outside San Diego) So...... We are making the trip a big huge shebang. Our current plan is to be gone for 19 days. 19 days on the road. Yes, we might be insane.

There is a lot of planning involved in pretty much taking 3 vacations and putting them into 1. I mean, if we have to drive right through Las Vegas, Why not spend a few days there, right? So we have our Vegas vacation, our Wedding Vacation, and our Disney vacation. I mean, where do you even start?

Well, you have to start with somewhere to stay. The bride rented a vacation house near the wedding. Asked us if we wanted to stay there as well. One thing down. Then, I looked into Vegas hotels. Holy smokes. So many options and places! I found a cheap price on one hotel. I booked it, and yay!!! But then I heard from many many people that the hotel has gone downhill and it wouldn't be a very good idea. So, we cancelled it. back to the drawing board. Found another one, stalled on booking, prices went up, I kicked myself. lol. But, it's been booked. Finally we have Disney. In Walt Disney World there are all sorts of hotel choices on the resort. I grew up with Disneyworld being the place to go. I knew nothing about Disneyland. They have 3 hotel options. And yeah, they're pretty expensive. But they have good neighbour hotels there. So we booked into a good neighbour hotel with a pretty cool water park attached.

So yay for somewhere to stay. Then we also had to look at airfare. Yeah, it's expensive. Plus, we're being super awesome and bringing our babysitter to watch the kids during the wedding, the bachelor/bachelorette parties, any other wedding activities, etc. So by the time we bought 4 full priced air fares... it gets expensive. So we're driving. If we drive straight through, it only takes 29 hours. So we needed a few more places to stay. We had to figure out how much we were going to drive each day, where we were going to stay.

It has been a long planning process but we are now in the home stretch. We are driving for 2 days, doing 2 days in vegas, 6 days in the vacation house, a random night we still have no idea where we are staying, then 6 days at Disneyland and drive back home. Stay tuned for a trip recap, because I'm sure there will be quite a few of them and they are going to be awesome.

Disney Weekend

Growing up, I LOVED Disney movies. Once I moved out on my own, even though we didn't have kids I told my husband, I really want to start collecting my own Disney movies. I can't even begin to guess how many Disney movies we owned as a kid.

(True story, I've told my mom I'm claiming the Disney movies when she dies. Yes, we're kind of morbid, whatever. What I'm going to do with them now since they are all VHS, I have no idea. But, they have been claimed.)

So, we have a great Disney collection. And, we have this super magical thing coming up called a trip to Disneyland.  Yes, Disneyland!!! Squee!

Of course I am being irrational that we are going to get there and Austin won't know who everyone is (let's be honest, Mackenzie probably won't know) and I want him to get the full magic of meeting
people from the movies. So I thought we should start watching the movies.

It started Friday night. We watched Beauty and the Beast. Then Saturday I was still nursing my injury from Friday so we hung out and watched some more movies. We started with the Lion King, then Cinderella, rounded off the night with Tangled. Sunday we started with the Little Mermaid, finding Nemo, then moved onto Cars and Cars 2. Finished off our night with Lilo and Stitch.


Now, I am SO looking forward to seeing Carsland. I have heard it's an amazing view and it's like stepping into the movie. Watching Austin watch Cars this weekend, I was thinking about Disneyland and the magic he's going to encounter in just a few short weeks. The inevitable excitement when he gets to meet a real size Lightning McQueen and Mater. I mean, he loves seeing books or cars of those 2. Meeting them IRL? I'm thinking mind=blown. And I'm going to be the mom taking a million pics and being sappy.

Since having kids, anything can make me cry. It's ridiculous and kind of embarrassing. I'm betting it will be about 2 minutes inside the park before I start to cry, if I even make it that long.  Seeing the park and the magic and excitement from Austin...... Tears, there will be tears.  I can't wait.