The Preslars Come!

My cousins came! My cousins came! And my Oma!  We had a glorious weekend with them.  We played outside.  Played outside again.  Oh yeah, and played outside.  We got filthy.  You could almost taste spring! We spent time at our house outside, we went to two parks, Snow Canyon State Park, and finished our journey off on good ol' Red Hill.

So much fun.

She doesn't exactly looked thrilled at holding hands does she?

Oh and did I mention frozen yogurt?  Yeah.  We got frozen yogurt.

What blogging slump?

Mommy might be experiencing a little post-Disneyland depression.  It creeps up suddenly and then she is all teary eyed and says something like "some day...we'll go again!"

Anyway, so we apologize for the blogging slump.  We did however get our fancy pictures in the mail today.  You have been warned.

But today's post is not about Disneyland.  It's about what we've been doing since then!!

We've played at the park on some of our nice almost spring days...

Cara is trying to give me bunny ears!

I went climbing and showed Mommy how to climb "Siena's Climb".

Actually, a really great story about this climbing trip.  I hadn't climbed in a while and Aunt Angie was trying to help me figure out where to put my feet and Grandpa was talking and they were getting all technical when I suddenly looked back at her and exclaimed, "Oh! I really like your shirt!"  That about summed up that day of climbing for me.

Another big thing, I got to show off my gymnastic routine for Mommy and Grandma.  Unfortunately they had us perform the routine a little far away from them so they didn't get any pictures, but here I am saluting!

We've had so much fun playing with Lexi lately.  She thinks we are so funny and likes to play Cinderella with us.

The Finale Part 2

Our final two days at the parks were awesome because we also got to go stay with Grandpa Great and Grandma Bev and Chloe.  I admit we were mostly sleeping when we were there, but we still got to play with Chloe a little bit!  We slept in a bit on Friday and then were part of the rope drop at Disneyland Park.  We got so much done in that first HOUR!

We rode this ride twice in a row.  It's our new favorite!

Then we did some fancy footwork in the Princess lines to get all but one princess to sign a poster!  We will need to wait to show you all the pictures for when our fancy photos get here but these should suffice.

We even got to play with Merida!! She drew herself into our poster.  And we were the only ones there so she just hung out with us which we loved.

We put to good use a bunch of rider swap passes that we had been saving up.  Mommy had even got some from her previous trip and they worked!

This is what Cara would do while I was on the big rides.  She didn't mind waiting in line and would just entertain herself with things she'd find on the ground.

We stayed for the fireworks on Friday which Daddy had never done with us and this time Cara was even awake.  We enjoyed very sticky cotton candy!

Saturday morning, the last day our passes were good for, brought with it the unusual offer of an extra magic hour for passholders!  The only problem was that it started at 7 am!  Mommy really wanted to be there that early but she let us all sleep an extra half hour and we got in at 7:30.  We had the park almost to ourselves which was good because we got in a final ride on Midway Mania waiting in NO line at all! We weren't planning on staying all day so we kind of had to pick and choose what we did.  Only favorite rides!  Cara apparently did NOT get enough sleep since she spent a few hours suddenly bursting into tears.

Grandpa has since informed that this would be his face after two hours at Disneyland with Mommy!

Daddy fixed this by scooping her up and taking her into Disneyland and getting in the long line for Peter Pan just like she wanted.

We enjoyed taking our very first ride on the Davy Crockett Canoes.  It's hard work when you have kiddos according to my mommy! But I loved it and said I wanted to do it AGAIN.

Then it was really time to start our good byes.  We took silly pictures.

And then waited in a ridiculously long line for our final ride, Pirates of the Caribbean.  (Mommy's choking up just thinking about it!)

We took a final picture in front of the under construction Main Street Train Depot,

And we hit the road.  Mommy really did cry leaving the parking structure and then would off and on get choked up thinking about it.  Cara and I were mostly just tired.

It was a great finale.  Stay tuned for just two more posts about Disney.  One with our "good" pictures and one with Mommy's "Disney How To's".

The Finale Part 1

Well it happened.  Our last trip to Disneyland on our annual passes.  Mommy was sad.  She cried when we left the parking garage on our final day.  She said that she really really loved getting to visit over and over. We've had a GREAT a year and our final trip was amazing.  

Mommy and Daddy splurged and got us two nights at the Paradise Pier (where they stayed on their honeymoon!) which is another Disney Resort.  We arrived very late at night and found a delightful room waiting for us with a gorgeous view of California Adventure.

Plus check out that beach ball pillow.  We even had Mickey Mouse rice crispy treats waiting for us! Needless to say, we were not very cooperative getting back to sleep.  I think Mommy and Daddy were a little tired when they only got five hours of sleep.  

Cara shot up out of bed at first light and asked "Are the rides going?" followed quickly by standing straight up, putting her hand above her eyes and exclaiming, "I can see the sun!"

Luckily we got moving with enough time for an impromptu breakfast with Mickey and some of his friends! We got to meet Mickey, Minnie, Daisy Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Stitch!  We danced and then Stitch taught us how to surf!

I think at this point I need to warn you.  Not only did Mommy and Daddy have almost 100 pictures between their phones, they also paid for us to have a special PhotoPass that contained 200 pictures of high quality photos taken by other people!  Mommy has no idea how to help me not post them all!  

Anyway, we started our days in the parks by heading into California Adventure and we never looked back!

That first day I got to ride Radiator Springs Racers FOUR times, maybe even FIVE times.  It was great! That's where the PhotoPass pictures are going to pay off.  We got to keep the photos of us taken on the rides!  But those pictures might have to be in "The Finale Part 2" since we are getting a CD shipped to us.  

Highlights from the first day included riding the bumper cars together.

Our traditional thumb photo on the Lady Bug ride.

We also got to meet Alice and the Mad Hatter

And Tinker Bell's sister, Periwinkle! (Okay so I don't currently have the picture of Periwinkle yet but that's the cool ice machine that keeps it cold enough for her!)

We got to meet Cinderella and one of her mice, Susie!

Plus we went and swam in the hotel pool!  I LOVED their slide and Cara was even brave enough to go down once all on her own!

Wednesday brought more fun but we were sad to leave our awesome hotel!

But I got to try new stuff in the Redwood Creek Challenge!

And we were really silly together!

Too be continued!