The New Disneyland

First of all, since my last posting, I have felt much better. I think I really just needed to get my feelings out instead of holding them in which I do too often. It also may have helped that I was insanely busy at work this week and therefore couldn't think as much about other things. Whatever the case, God helped.


Even though it is Memorial Day weekend and we knew Disneyland would be crazy busy, we decided to go anyway. Plus we went in the morning, so it wouldn't be at its busiest in the evening. It turned out to be a good call. Not because of the business factor, but because each of the kids reached a milestone today...on the same day! Courtney reached the 46" mark and Skyler reached the 40" mark!

This, of course, meant that we (Courtney and I) had to do Indiana Jones. We took advantage of Fastpass since it was only for a couple of hours later and we had just gotten there. She was pretty scared in line, but afterwards, she had a big smile and said she liked it. She said the big snake was kind of scary, but loved going under the rolling rock. Needless to say, we'll be making many more visits there in the future.


And then there is Skyler. To this point she had been limited to Matterhorn and the Toontown roller coaster. But now she can go on Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and Star Tours (not to mention Tower of Terror in DCA)! We did half of those today: Splash and Big Thunder. She loved both of them. Unfortunately, we didn't use Fastpass on Splash. Courtney and I hadn't used our Indiana fastpasses yet so we couldn't get four for Splash. So we waited in line for over an hour. It was worth it though. We got a little wet on the first few drops, but nothing to be proud about. Then came the last (HUGE) drop. After cruising at the bottom, a huge (probably 6 feet tall or so) wave kicked up from the front the front of our log and of course, we pretty much went through it Seeing Skyler's big smile and Courtney's smile afterwards and hearing Traci's laugh and realizing how wet I was, made it all worth it. Those are the moments I live for in life.

Then came Big Thunder Mountain. Again, we were able to take advantage of Fastpass, and that probably saved us about 45 minutes (similar to the advantage on Indiana Jones). Skyler loved it so much and was laughing everytime she lifted off the seat according to Traci who rode with her. That's my girl! Courtney did her usual top-of-the-lungs scream on Big Thunder which led her to her belly laugh between screams. I love it when she laughs like that.

Days like today at Disneyland are the moments I will remember for a long time to come and are what make having a family so enjoyable and worthwhile. I look forward to many more moments like this. Now onto the rest of the long weekend with much more family time planned, just the way a long weekend should be.