California Bound... Disney Style!

So I never EVER tell A in advance when we do vacations like this. If I was to tell her in advance she would spend every waking second talking about the race and wondering EXACTLY how long until we were leaving and what we were doing and who she would get to see, etc etc. So Friday morning, the whole plan was to keep A in the dark as LONG as possible.

Even though we are normally out the door by 9:00, she was surprisingly not all that curious why we were heading to IHOP for breakfast on a weekday. Hmm. Then after that, errands at Target. She seems to realize that it is getting late and maybe she is missing school. She says "Mom, text your phone and see if it is a Kindergarten day." I tell her we will drive by the school to see if there are kids out. No kids. Hmmm.

She is still oblivious. Finally I tell her we need to go for a "drive" with J. She keeps saying "WHERE?" He tells her the dentist... Any other kid would be traumatized. Not A. She is psyched. Clean teeth, a toy from the treasure chest AND a new toothbrush? Heh. So we are driving to the airport and we are about 10 minutes from the airport and she says "J, I think the dentist is not this way, this is the airplane road."

Finally when we get to the airport she realizes we are going somewhere. And she even guesses correctly! "I think we are going to Disneyland to see Heather!"

As you can imagine, the excitement is NO LONGER CONTAINABLE!

Heather's SUPER AWESOME husband picks us up at the airport and after picking up their kids, he drops us off at Downtown Disney to hang out until Heather is off work. YAY! DISNEY!!

Gabs & A

Where is the best place to take a kid in Downtown Disney? Build-A-Bear of course! No purchases, but the kids all got balloon animals:

Heather texts to say she is on her way, so we head over to the expo.

But of course we have to have a picture taken by this pretty castle:

#1, #2, A and Gabs

Heather meets us inside and we walk around the expo. PURE.CHAOS. So many people! And tough toting around four kids that want to look at and TOUCH and get samples of E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G After a while, we cannot seem to figure out where to get our bibs. Turns out that the guy outside saying "make sure you know your bib number" really meant "make sure you have your bib." We have to go back outside the expo walk around a building, make a U-turn down a skinny path and down a ramp into a dungeon to get bibs. Super crazy.

We get the bibs and our awesome coast to coast wristbands we will have to wear all weekend. Then it is BACK upstairs to get goody bags and shirts. Right when we finish, L arrives (she had been on a later flight) and we do this all again. Substantially faster now that we know where everything is. By the time we are done it is already about 7:30 and we desperately need dinner. Everything packed, but we find a place with pizza. Works for the kids:

Heather is awesome and drives us back to our hotel, and the kids are DONE. H goes to bed pretty much immediately, A only a few minutes after. So I decide that I need to do my 4 minutes of planks and I have my headphones on watching an episode of Numbers on my iPhone. A commotion, but it is a bit muffled through my headphones. I swear it sounds like someone is throwing furniture off the roof of the hotel. Then I take the headphones off and it sounds like I'm in the middle of a war zone. Like grenades are being launched right by my head. Turns out we are like 3 feet from where the fireworks for Disney are set off. Kids somehow sleep right though it. How????

Lights out around 10:00, A and I have to get up around 4:15 to get ready for the 5K!!