California Trip

We just got back from a week long trip to California.  This was our first real vacation with a little one, and we had an awesome time! I learned a lot about traveling with a toddler and Molly did so good!

We flew from Denver to Orange County on Sunday.  I was super nervous to fly with Molly and to top it off we couldn't find her birth certificate! A hospital bill ended being OK to use as something with here name and birthday, but they did ask for it both ways!

Our flight out was at 8:15am, so we had to wake Molly up at 5:15am to get to the airport.  Security took a while to look through all our baby stuff, and they examined her liquid medicine for about 10 minutes.  She LOVED the moving sidewalks at the airport so her and daddy went up and down them for about 30 minutes while we waited at the gate.

We got to board early which was nice, and a nice older mom sat next to us.  Molly did AMAZING on the flight.  We gave her a different activity about every 10-20 minutes and she was so good. She liked opening and shutting the window, and playing with her stickers best.

We got to CA at about 11:00 so we headed to find somewhere to eat lunch.  We drove to a mall, and let Molly sleep in the car for about an hour before going in to eat and play.  Luckily they had a really nice kid area and rest room since we couldn't check into our condo until 4pm.

Family bathroom at the mall

Monday was our first day at Disneyland. We started in California Adventure.  Molly's favorite part of the day was probably meeting Doc McStuffins.  She liked watching lots of the rides, but once we were on them she was very scared.  She liked the Monsters Inc ride a lot, but other than that she could have cared less about them. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't ride Tower of Terror, but I did ride California Soarin' which is a fun one!

 

Day 2 we stayed mostly in Disneyland.  This time we went home to nap in the late afternoon and came back after dinner.  I wish we would have done this everyday! The park at night was fun.  We got to catch a little park of the awesome parade after getting stuck on It's a Small World.  Molly loved Small World, the Storyland boats, Finding Nemo's Submarine, and waving her magic glow wand around.  Some of those kiddy rides are SCARY and she did not like the dark ones (which is like all the classic rides). I got some nasty blisters on my toes from walking so much that day.

The whole crew!

On It's a Small World

Still on Small World....

Still on Small World...

Day 3 was exhausting for me.  This pregnant lady was tired, blistered and jealous that she couldn't ride anything exacting. I may or my not have had a meltdown around lunch time... I did get to ride Splash Mountain a couple times even though it said it wasn't recommended for extant mothers. It was no less jerky than some of those kid rides so I feel fine about it. We rode most of the kid rides that we hadn't gotten to yet, and watched the afternoon parade.  Molly loved the parade, and a dancing monkey came over and played with her.  While we were waiting for the parade, Matt helped a guy in a wheelchair get unstuck from the train tracks.  A manager saw this, and gave us a skip the line pass for 6 people! We used it on Peter Pan since it was pretty much the only one we hadn't ridden yet because the line is ALWAYS too long.  I'm so glad we went to Disneyland, but boy did I sleep well for days (and still am actually).

After 3 days in Disneyland, we drove to Thousand Oaks to visit Matt's brother's family.  It was the first time they had met Molly and the first time we had met 2 of their little ones.  Molly's cousins were so excited to meet her, and she did pretty well with all the attention.  Unfortunately it rained all weekend so we weren't able to hit up the beach, but we had a fun time playing and relaxing which was just what I needed.

The flight home was rough. It wasn't full so we were able to take Molly's car seat on the plane for her to sit in... I thought this was going to be awesome and that she'd fall asleep.. not the case.   She was whiny the whole time, hungry, and tired.  We also had to circle around the Denver airport several times because of bad weather so our flight ended up being about 30 minutes longer than expected.  Luckily my wonderful hubby let me read and rest and her took care of our crazy child. ;)

Overall we had such a fun trip, and I'm so glad we went! Molly seems to still be trying to catch up on sleep because she's sleeping until about 8:30 every morning! It's nice to be home, but the bad weather just follows up wherever we go... we're in for another snowstorm this weekend and I'm sure I'll be wishing I was back in California.