The Happiest Christmas on Earth

This year for Christmas something very exciting happened. Santa sent us a letter about a week before Christmas saying that he had a special surprise for us, but that we had to get it a little early. The Saturday before Christmas we woke up to presents under our tree, but not just any presents: a two day trip to Disneyland. We were all very excited. Even Hannah, who had tripped over her pajamas the night before and hyper-extended her elbow. She wore a sling and took lots of pain medication for the first two days. It healed up pretty quick, and we were glad that it wasn't a broken arm as we had first feared. We drove down and stayed with Aaron's Grandmother Renee overnight and then on to Disneyland. We stayed about a mile from the park, but were able to walk in, so we didn't need our car. Our hotel had a swimming pool and it was almost warm enough, so we went swimming twice.

Disneyland was amazing. Everywhere you looked was some new fun Christmas decoration to look at.

This is the view down Mainstreet. And no I have no idea who these women are.

Here we are with Santa. No one wanted to sit on his lap.

We were able to go on almost all the rides we wanted to without waiting in super long lines. I think the longest wait was about 30 minutes--most were around 10. We used a program called Ridemax to plan out our days. It told us when to go on which rides to avoid the crowds.

Small World was one of our first rides.

Small World was interesting because it had so many Christmas traditions from all over the world depicted. And apparently, Jingle Bells is an international Christmas song--who knew?

One of the kids choose Tea Cups as our last ride of the day.

Why are me and Katrina the only ones who look exhausted?

Maggie and Caleb and I all rode in the non-spiny cup.

The next day we spent mostly at California Adventure. It was a little slower day. We got up later and left the park around 4pm. Then we went to a restaurant far away from Disneyland for some real food and no crowds.

A is for Abbott. Caleb, of course had to climb up into the A.

It was a really fun time to spend with together with our family. After all the fun and excitement and a good night's rest, we made our way up the coast to visit Aaron's parents and siblings. That was a fun time, too. I may post about that sometime, but the kids took my camera outside and took a bajillion pictures of their rock creations and videos of themselves being silly and used up the battery in my camera. That severely limited the amount of pictures I could take.