Our California Adventure - Disneyland!

Easily my personal favorite day, although I don't think anyone else would agree with me!  We were Disneyland newbies!  We've never been to California as a family.  Wes and I had only visited Disneyland once each when we were kids.  The only time I had been there was when I was 16 and picking up my brother from his mission. Sound familiar??  Kind of ironic.  My brother served in the San Bernardino mission and part of his mission is now part of Colton's.  In fact my brother served in Pomona also.  Anyway, when I went to Disneyland, all of Fantasyland was closed.  All I wanted to do was ride the teacups and I didn't get to.  So it's been on my bucket list ever since to ride the teacups at Disneyland!  And they were open this time!  Hooray!!  Wes has a very hard time with crowds and lines and lots of people.  If he didn't make it to heaven, he thinks Disneyland would pretty much be his version of you-know-where!  But he knew that I was excited so he made every effort to just go along with it and be in a good mood.  He was a very good sport all day long!  The kids had fun and even though they're old kids, they enjoyed riding the rides and seeing the things they have heard about.

Here we are!!

So happy to be standing in our first line.  Not.

But we are excited!!

First stop - Space Mountain!  One of our faves!

Next stop - TEACUPS!  Wes took a bajillion pictures of us.

Still standing in line, but excited!

Yay!  Here we are!  My dream come true!!

We were so squished in that teacup.

But we did get the pretty blue one I had been eyeing.

Whee!  So fun.

Pirates was another family favorite.

This is what Colton looked like most of the time that we were in line.

And this is how Wes looked in line.

Star Tours, we liked this one a lot, except it made Wes a bit queasy.

Clint found a new friend in Frontierland.

Wes liked all the artifacts in the Big Thunder line.

Kori was so excited for Nemo!  It was the longest line we stood in all day, but it was a cute ride.

Inside the sub!

Okay, so this is the start of the silly pictures.  We were waiting for our dinner.  We had been waiting for quite a long time and we were feeling a little punchy by this time.  So that explains this next series of goofy shots.

 

In this photo, our true feelings about Disneyland come out!  Ha ha!!

On the shuttle back to the car.  A little dazed and spent.

Quotes from Disneyland:

1. "We're at Disneyworld, I'm sick of your mouth!"  We heard a mom yell this at her little toddler.  It was at the beginning of the day too!  That poor kid.  But it became a running joke between us all day.

2. Mom: "This is why we didn't bring you when you were little."  See Quote #1

3. Wes:  "Take a picture of me standing in line, heh heh."

4. Kori: "There's Rapunzel, yay!"  We were a little disappointed that there weren't more characters hanging around.  Read: There were hardly any characters all day long.  But Kori did catch  Rapunzel as she was ducking out of Fantasyland.

5. Mom: "Family vacations with adult children are so nice."  See Quote #1

Our California Adventure - Exploring Long Beach

 Reasons we decided to stay in Long Beach:
1. We wanted to spend lots of time at the ocean.
2. It was close to the freeway that took us over to Colton's mission.
3. The beach there is really pretty and the town had a lot to offer.
4. It had an available condo!  We were a little late getting a reservation.
On Tuesday we decided to explore the Long Beach area.  We drove across the bay and saw the Queen Mary.  Then we went to Shoreline Drive.  We loved the aquarium!  We petted the manta rays and they were just like little puppies coming up to greet us.  We walked around the lighthouse.  We ate at Bubba Gump's and had a delicious lunch.  There was a race car track all set up through the Shoreline Drive area.  They were getting ready for a grand prix, and we were lucky enough to catch the cars doing some testing of the track.  The boys loved that!  They were pretty loud!

Here's one of the "puppies."

Thumbs up for sharks!

Kori loves fish.  Can you tell?

Aaaaaghhhh!

We got in on a little sea otter show.  They were really fun to watch!

There's the Queen Mary in the background.

"Mama always said....."  It was a good thing we had just barely watched Forrest Gump since our waiter gave us a trivia quiz!  We did very well I must say.

Colton was on his Ipod pretty much anytime we were waiting for something.

Kori wasn't feeling well after our trip to Long Beach, so she and Wes stayed at the condo while Clint, Colton and I headed up to the mission area.  Chinatown is in Colton's mission, so we explored it a little bit.  Colton ordered this weird smoothie.  It was strawberry and looked normal except it had these little black balls of some kind of gelatin.  I was creeped out by the black stuff going up the straw!  He made us taste it.  It wasn't too bad, just something I've never seen before.  Now I know what Boba is.  After Chinatown, we visited Maria Figueroa in Pomona and she made us some yummy authentic enchiladas with rice and beans!  She was adorable and it was fun to see her.  We also stopped to see the Valle family.  Colton baptized this family.  They don't speak any English.  It was cool for me and Clint to just sit and listen.  We picked out a few words, and we knew what they were talking about some of the time, but most of it we had no idea!

Clint imitating a lion in Chinatown.

It really felt like we were in a whole new country.

This is a photo we already had from the Valle's baptism.  They are one attractive family, seriously!  

Colton with cute Maria!