flashback friday

Disneyland 2004, Amber was easy to convert to disneyism. We have had fun before Logan and have even more fun with him.

Amber, right before Ursula took away her voice...

Disneyland 1985ish, Alyson stole my peanutbutter sandwich.

Okay, these are the last ones...

Sorry that I keep posting Disney pictures. We took a ton, and we just aren't ready for the magic to be over...

This year was the first time that we have gone so early in the year. The weather was cold but the flowers were beautiful.

We love you Mickey.

warm California sun...

The castle

For any of you who have young ones, don't miss the Starwars show. It was a blast. Hopefully Logan will be old enough next time to go up and get some Jedi training. Hey Bri is that you in the front there? All this time you were teasing that I was a starwars geek and there you are a full fledged jedi master... How is your Wookie?... I mean Ryan?

What a cute kid. My mom saved alot of my baby clothes and this is one shirt that I am sure happy she kept. Vintage Mickey, 1983.

Big thunder

Rides We Rode

Al and Ben riding "flik's flyers"

Grandma riding the Caterpillar...

Dumbo was a blast and even though the line was sometimes forever long, Logan is a fun kid to wait in line with.

Autopia became one of Logan's new favorite rides. He was fun to watch, he couldn't hit the gas and hold onto the wheel at the same time. Best of all was Amber taking this picture. She was going full speed completely turned around, no hands on the wheel so her car was smashing back and forth off the rail, screaming like a little kid taking pictures of us behind her. What a spaz...

Dumbo without the line... Same concept, however when this one gets going, if your rocket is down all the way, it feels like the centrifugal force it going to toss you out, there is nothing holding you in but an old leather strap...

Only Ben can tell you the difference between a merry-go-round and a carousel. The latter was closed so we spent an hour on the Triton's Merry-go round. Logan was funny, one of the times we rode it, he just wanted to sit on the bench (usually reserved for those physically unable to hoist their girth up on a dolphin) He is almost as big a spaz as his mother.

This is the year we discovered the 'Bug's Land' portion of the park. There are tons of fun rides for kids Logan's age. The bumper cars go about a half a mile / hour but Logan got a kick out of driving a potato bug.

The Ladybug spinner. I about lost it on that one...

*other favorites include:

Finding Nemo Submarines... the line is really long cause it is still fairly new but I thought it was very clever

Winnie the Pooh... nuff said

Splash Mountain... Logan and Amber had to sit this one out so Al, Ben, Kristen and I waited until the park was about to close on the weekend to ride it. When it is freezing cold and near midnight, the line is non existent. We rode it 3 times straight without getting off. Needless to say, we were cold, wet and smiling...

Matterhorn... Dad almost dropped his camera ( he was trying to video the ride while riding it...)

Big Thunder... This one was aways my favorite growing up.

Tower of Terror... never gets old, the drop is the best!

Space Mountain... So much fun, Amber was bummed about missing that one.

peter pan, snow white, Mr. toad's wild ride, Alice in wonderland, story book canal boats, Casey jr., the Disneyland railroad, Pinocchio, star tours, buzz lightyear, soarin, screamin, ....The list goes on, what a great trip!

Best ride in the park

Ben was so much fun with Logan. Always there to run around with and play with. He was nice to have around since Logan's energy capacity far exceeds mine and Ambers combined.

You would think that this would freak a kid out but he kept saying, "more, more, more."

There were plenty of rides at Disneyland that Logan loved but this was the best one.

Fun with Family

Unfortunately, Jocey was sick for most of the trip, and spent most of her time in the room in bed, I didn't even get a picture of her this year. So... here is one from last year's trip. We missed you Jocelyn and hope you feel better soon.

Logan and Daddy in line for Dumbo.

Kristen helping Logan choose a good light saber.

Al and Logan soaking up the fun on main street.

Mommy and Logan at the shooting range.

California Dreamin

Galactic Hero / Top Space Ranger (for a day)

After three years of trying, I finally made it to the top of the list on the Buzz lightyear ride. The first day in the park and our first ride, the ride stalled right in front of Zerg and I got 2nd place at 1,600,000 pts. Later in the week I hit first place in the morning though my score was low, I felt cool to have my picture come up on the screen outside the ride.

Fun with Grandpa and Grandma

It has not been too long since our visit to Utah so Logan was really excited to see Grandpa. The first morning after they arrived, Logan woke up at 5:30 and started calling out, "Grandpa, where are you? Wake up!"

Here they are playing hide and seek in Grandpa's hoodie in line to drive the cars at Autopia.

Grandma was the perfect person to take on Monsters Inc and Winnie the Pooh. Especially since she seems to be the only one of us that know all of the words to the song and Logan has always loved to hear her sing.

Though she and Grandpa were tired and spent alot of time resting and watching us have fun, Logan would grab her hand and say, "c'mon Grandma lets go." It was so cute.

Characters We Met

Tigger was so fun to watch, he was hyper and bouncing all around the place. As soon as he saw Tigger, Logan started jumping so they faced each other and bounced into each other's arms. Tigger picked him up off the ground and swung him around in circles. Then when he put Logan down, Logan started bouncing again and Tigger got down on his hands and knees and and bowed in awe of Logan's jumping. It was really funny. They had everyone laughing.

Logan's all time favorite character is Buzz Lightyear. He has seen both toy story movies a hundred times, he listens to the "you've got a friend in me" song in the car, he has the action figure and is all the time spouting out random quotes like, "I come in peace." So we decided that we would be failures in parenting if we did not catch up with him at the park. Most of the characters have set times and designated places that they show up at everyday. Buzz is a little different. He is sheduled to show up every hour somewhere in Tomorrowland. The first couple of days we never saw him and then on the fourth or fifth day he came right by us but Logan was asleep in the stroller so... On our last day at the park we asked a bunch of workers where he would be and they all told us things like, "Buzz is a space man, he flies wherever he wants." Luckily, Ben went and got the lowdown from a security officer, he told us a few places where he knew Buzz would not turn up, that narrowed it down to 3 areas of Tomorrowland. So we split up with a plan to call everyone if we saw him in our specific area. About two minutes later I got the call, He was at Space mountain so I headed over there just in time to see Logan running after him yelling at the top of his lungs, "Buzz!" We finally tracked him down and got some great pics. Notice the galactic bell-bottoms.

In Critter Country by the Winnie the Pooh ride, (one of Logan's favorites) there is a spot where you can wait in line to meet Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger. Logan knows them all and went running to each of them to give them hugs.

Pooh was his favorite of the three, Kim gave him a stuffed pooh bear for his second birthday and he sleeps with it every night, he gave pooh a good 3 minute hug and you could tell that Pooh was loving it as much as Logan was. I thought he was going to fall asleep in Pooh's arms. Unfortunately, there was a line of people behind us eager to get their turns.

Amber and I had a pass to go on Soarin' and so Ben and Al took Logan to the bear park over in California adventure. They put on a really fun show featuring the bears from Brother Bear. Logan sure loved them. Thanks Al and Ben!

Logan loves Pluto and when we saw him at the entrance to the park, he ran up to him while other people were getting their pictures taken with him so I had to take off after him. We got in line and when it was our turn logan gave him a big hug. As we were walking away Logan said, "Pluto is a good doggy." What a kid...

Here we go again

It has been about 9 months since we were running around like little kids at Disneyland last year. We always have such a great time there and now that Logan is getting older, it is fun to watch him get excited. We fly out on this coming Tuesday and with the time change, we will be roamin the park by 10:00 Cali time. Sure to be a blast as always, Logan is already telling everyone that he is going to "DizLand" to see "Mickey and Pluto". We put on the music for the electric light parade and he dances all around the house. We are going to have a blast. We are hopeless disneyholics, this will be Logan's 3rd time making the trip!