Disneyland

Our family went to California with Mark's brother, Alan, and his family. We had a fabulous time together! We spent one evening and 3 days exploring Disneyland and California Adventure. When we headed into the park the first evening, a guy stopped us and handed us 4 fast passes to any ride in California Adventure. Mark, Jared, Ryan, and Jacob took the passes and headed off to Soarin Over California. The rest of us went to explore bug-land. A little while later we met up to watch the electric light parade -- very cool! We were all exhausted from traveling and playing on the beach that day or we would have taken better advantage of those fast passes! Oh well, we still had 3 days to play. Here's a picture of the boys and Mark on Splash Mountain -- a true favorite! While the big boys rode California Screamin (the huge roller coaster) Matthew, Jacob and I took a few rides on the carousel.
One day we happened to catch the Pixar Parade in California Adventure. Jacob absolutely loved seeing all the characters from Monsters Inc., Cars, The Incredibles, Toy Story, etc. Below is a picture of him (Jacob is in the orange t-shirt) waving with both hands at the rats from Ratatouille.
The boys favorite rides were Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Screamin, Soarin, and the Tower of Terror. Jacob insists his favorite was Buzz Lightyear, but he rode everything and loved it all except the Tower of Terror (and he wasn't tall enough for Screamin, or he would have loved that too!) I loved Soarin and Space Mountain. I'm too chicken to do Tower of Terror and I didn't quite talk myself into Screamin -- I wish now I would have gone, since I loved Space Mountain so much and Screamin is much more smooth and fast. Next time!

We weren't going to venture into Downtown Disney, but when we hopped on the monorail, we realized there was a stop in Downtown Disney and the Lego store was at the bottom of the staircase, so we went. What a fun store! The boys could have spent a solid hour at least exploring the store and playing with the legos. There was a life-size Darth Vader, a giraffe, and a couple other things I can't think of, all made of legos. There were tables of legos out where kids could sit down and play and create their own masterpieces, and of course there was all the cool Lego merchandise that you can't buy at Target or Wal-mart. Here's a picture of the boys on a giant lego brick outside the store:
We had a great week and the vacation was really "magical" for Jacob -- he's the perfect age to enjoy every aspect of Disney -- rides, characters, shows, shopping, food, etc.