California Trip Part 3

 On Wednesday I decided to take the kids to "Adventureland Park" as a little preview for our big Disneyland day on Friday. It was a small amusement park- you paid a cover charge and then all the rides were free. Most of the rides we could all ride together so it was the perfect 1:3 parent to child ratio adventure.

There was a little train ride that ran all around the perimeter of the park. It was one of our favorite things to do.

We went after lunch and after a couple hours the boys got hungry. I didn't think to bring snacks. Ryan saw they were selling soft pretzels and asked if he could have one. They were way over priced and we were just about ready to leave anyway so I told him no. He was good, but did mention, "I've never had a giant pretzel before..." He was right! I think I sometimes forget that these little people are just experiencing things for the very first time. His little comment got me thinking and in the end I decided to get him his very first giant pretzel. Even though they were just about the worst pretzels I had ever had, they were impressed and now he can't use "I've never had..." on me again!

After Zach's conference, we went out to dinner and then to Downtown Disney. The Lego store was awesome! The boys loved it.

We let the boys each pick out one souvenir. Brady picked the first thing he saw in the first store we went to- a pirate sword. We talked to him about how if he got the sword that was all he was going to get and that there was still a lot of things he hadn't seen, etc. But we was dead set on the pirate sword. We ended up buying it and it didn't leave his side for the rest of the trip. Apparently, the boy knows what he likes !

Thursday was a challenging day for us. It was Day 4 of living in a hotel and the novelty had worn off. The next day was our big Disneyland day and I wanted everyone well rested. I pushed naps and we hung close to the hotel. Ryan had picked up a couple Legos the night before so he and I stayed in the non-napping room and played Legos while the little boys snoozed. At one point we were so bored that we took some beach balls into the hall and kicked them around. I'm sure our neighboring rooms loved us. ;)

All week we had been passing Joe's Italian Ice right by our hotel. There was always a huge line so we decided to check it out on Thursday night since we would be checking out of our hotel in the morning.

 By the time we got around to going (the boys went swimming and then it took us forever to find somewhere to eat dinner) it was 8:00pm. So much for being well rested the next morning!

The ice cream was good and the kids fell into bed when we got back to the room. Zach and I then stayed up way too late packing up the room and getting ready to go to Disneyland in the morning!