Disneyland!!! April 28, 2008

"Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy."

For me the magic of Disneyland starts when I walk through the gates and read those words.  They are on a plaque that hangs on the tunnel you walk through to enter the park, and when I read them I get all choked up.  I think about how wonderful it is to be on vacation with the ones I love the very most, and how precious it is to spend so much time together just playing and loving each other - building memories.  As I walked through that tunnel for the first time with my very own "little one", I followed the directions on that plaque.  Leaving behind all other worries and responsibilities I walked down main street thinking back on the precious moments of "yesterday" and my childhood.  I remembered how magical it felt to be there as a child, how much I loved spending time there with my parents and sisters, and how my mom cried every time it was time to leave and go home.  I thought about a few years ago when Chris and I went there with the rest of my family for my sister's wedding and how Chris and I dreamed about what it would be like in our future "tomorrow" to bring our children there.  As we walked in to the park Chris got all mushy too thinking about how our "fantasy", our dream of finally having a child, had come true and how it was so wonderful to be there with Noah to share in the magic with him.  As Cinderella once said, it was "completely wonderful..."

We left our house at 5am on Monday morning thinking that Noah would fall back asleep in the car and we could get a few hours of driving in before he woke up again.  He must've been as excited as we were though because he didn't fall asleep again.  Luckily we were armed with fruit snacks galore, a DVD player, and the promise that he could ride the "Mickey choo-choo" soon.  Around Nephi Noah started to notice a lot of cattle outside his window and he started pointing to them and calling them "Buffalope!"  He must've been remembering the buffalo we saw a few days before when we went to Antelope Island and got the words mixed up.

We pulled into our hotel at about 3:30, and even though it wasn't our plan to go to Disneyland until the next morning, Daddy couldn't wait to go there with him and all Noah could talk about was riding the "Chhhoo-chhhoo right now!".  We couldn't have started our week at Disneyland any better.  First stop was a ride all the way around the park on the train, then a ride up main street on the fire engine, and later a ride on the other "choo-choo" the monorail.  Noah loved it all.

We spent a lot of time there.  Monday night, Tues. all day long until dinner (Noah napped in his stroller during lunch), Wed. all day (except for thankfully a nap in our hotel in the afternoon), Fri. all day long (except for lunch, a nap) and we even stayed there until midnight, and Sat. morning for a few hours before we left to drive to Las Vegas.  We had sooo many fun moments with Noah that I don't want to forget, so I'll just write down a few.

One of Noah's favorites, and a for sure highlight of the whole trip, was going on the Winnie the Pooh ride and meeting Pooh and Eeyore.  We went on the "Winnie the Pooh crazy train" at least 7 times.  Noah was so wide-eyed in every ride, just soaking it all in and then we would talk about it afterwards.  As he became more familiar with the Pooh ride, because we went on it so many times, he'd start pointing things out to us kind of like we did to him.  So cute!  He really wanted to go talk to Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore.  When we first saw Eeyore Noah said, "Eeyore tail broken."  It always surprises me the things he remembers!  When it was our turn in line to meet Pooh Noah was too shy to do it by himself, so I carried him up there.  He just looked at him in awe and then gave him a hug.  It was the same thing with Eeyore, but he also gave him a high five and we told Eeyore that Noah was worried that his tail was still broken.  Eeyore turned around and showed him it was hooked on right, and Noah thought that was fun.  He's talked about hugging Pooh and Eeyore almost every day since even remembering to tell me that he gave Eeyore a high five.

Noah's other favorite was the Tarzan Treehouse.  We climbed through it three times and every time he giggled with glee the whole way.  At the bottom there are hanging ropes that you can pull that are attatched to boxes with mysterious things inside.  Each time you pull the rope it makes a different noise (elephant, monkey, tiger) as if that's what's inside the box.  I helped Noah hang from them to put enough weight on the rope to make the noise in the box go and he was having so much fun.

Before our trip when Chris bought his wetsuit for surfing and tried it on Noah said it was his "Superman" suit.

Noah wasn't crazy about staying put when we were waiting in line.  He got better at it as the week went on but it also helped that we bough him a "monkey backpack".  Really it was a kid leash!  He actually liked wearing it though!

Everytime we walked by the Alice in Wonderland section he wanted to go up to rabbit's house, knock on the door, and see if anyone was home.  Check out his cute "monkey backpack"!  That thing was a life saver!

Noah loves, loves to wear hats so Chris and I were really excited to buy him his Mickey ears.  Noah liked them to and wore them almost constantly for days.  Having him in our family makes everything so much more fun.  Parenting paydays like this are priceless!

We took Noah on the Pirates ride 4 times.  The first time he held on to us pretty tight, in fact he turned around on my lap to face me, wrapped his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck.  The second time as soon as we were close enough in line to see the boats he started to cry a little and said he didn't want to go on it.  We told him it was too late and we were going.  Are we mean parents or what?!  We talked to him as we went through the ride though and tried to make it seem like it wasn't scary.  We showed him where all the animals were and sang the "yo ho a pirates life for me" song to him.  The third and fourth time he was lovin it!  He even asked to go on the pirate boats and every now and then since he will start telling me about going on it.  He'll tell me about how the boat goes on a "slide", how there are "bad guys" who fight, how the guns "squirt" (the water splashes when the pirates shoot their guns), and will sing the "yo ho" song to us and wave his little finger like he's conducting the music.  I think Disneyland is actually going to help, I hope, with his nightmares because he's seen that scary things can be fun, that they aren't real, and that they won't hurt him.  He didn't have any nightmares on our whole trip.  Yay!  At breakfast one morning someone gave him a "pirate" bandana and he wanted to wear that a lot too.  He called it his "pirate hat".  We bought him a little pirate shirt with Mickey and Pluto as pirates on it as a souvenier.

This year at Disneyland is their "Year of a Million Dreams" where they randomly give out lots of prizes like a night's stay in a private suite designed for Walt Disney, and a bunch of other things.  We were so lucky on Fri. morning and as we got off the Toon Town rollercoaster for little kids they gave us special fast pass badges for a bunch a rides that we could go on whenever we wanted!  It was so much fun!

My favorite part of the trip was the night we all stayed up until midnight having fun, watching the fireworks and Fantasmic, and riding the rides.  Our original plan was that Noah would fall asleep in his stroller after watching the fireworks and then Chris and I would take turns going on some of the big-people rides.  What ended up happening was so much more fun!  We rode Dumbo one last time before the fireworks and then watched them from there.  Noah sat in his stroller covering his eyes with his tiny hands but peeked through his fingers to see them the whole time.  It was sooo cute!  Other people saw him doing it and pointed it out to each other because he was being so adorable.  I went on Splash Mountain at 11pm, got soaking wet, and loved every second of it.  I got to sit in the very front seat and at the end where you get thrown into the briar patch I leaned as far as I could over and looked down as we went over.  It was so much fun!  Then we went on pirates again, and finished the night on Peter Pan.  It was an absolutely perfect night.

The best parts of the trip were just spending time together:

(Noah loves to snuggle.  Daddy was checking his email and Noah was watching tv back in our room and decided the perfect place to do that was sitting on top of Daddy.  Noah's giving Daddy a kiss in this picture.)

We had so much fun together on this trip...Sat. morning we went on the "crazy train" little kid roller coaster at toon town two times and the Mark Twain boat to finish things up.  Noah loved that there were so many boats, cars, and trains to ride.  I'm afraid life is going to be awful boring when we get back into normal life and can't ride those all day long every day.  I guess that's why vacations are so wonderful though.  I was glad to be wearing my sunglasses as we left Disneyland that morning because I cried...just like my mom used to.