Some more trip details and pics!

Back to the blog....I have been so slow in writing and going through all 750 of my pictures. I am behind on putting things out here. I still need to write about the awesome Ally's Army game and my Dad's fall party that we had over the weekend, so that is still to come I did not forget!

But first....

One of the very exciting things about our trip for Ally (and her Dad) was that a beautiful white limo picked us up to take us to the airport in Columbus. We also had one waiting for us in Columbus when we got back at 11:30 pm at night. The kids loved it. Here we are right before we departed:
They really wanted to use the champange glasses in the limo, so here is Carly with some Mountain Dew to celebrate. Since it was a "special wish" I obliged on the POP...way too much.

We stayed at a Disney Hotel called Paradise Pier. We were pretty high, 12th floor, and the view out of our room was an awesome one of the California Adventure Park. This is kind of a cross between Epcot and Universal if you are familiar with the parks in Florida. The kids also loved the hotel, especially the fact that they got their own room, which was connected to ours and that the maids left little gold "goofy" coins on their pillow every night. I loved that we could watch the World of Color fountain/light show from our room every night if we wanted to.

For Carly, she was happiest that she finally got to meet the princesses! She had a little autograph book, which she got them all to sign, and then we got pictures to put in it. Here she is with Ariel, one of her faves.
The park was all decked out for Halloween, which was fun to see. I had never been to a Disney park at this time of year.
For Ally's 9th birthday, we went to a character breakfast and Minnie Mouse brought her a little cake.

Jerad and I decided to give her a camera/videocamera for her birthday this year. We gave it to her at breakfast that day, and she took so many of her own pictures. She wants to do a scrapbook of her own for the trip. OH.....she also got some new glasses which she wore a lot! Here she is playing with the camera:

We all took turns wearing Ally's Army shirts every day. That way we have a picture of Ally's Army in all parts of California where we were. Here is Jerad's day. You can also see behind them the first "upside down" rollar coaster that Ally RODE. Crazy girl. She is so brave and no ride was too scary for her. Um...her Dad took her, not me.

On the contrary, Carly was an absolute scaredy cat most of the time. She did not want to ride anything, so we finally quit trying. The best was when she got scared to ride the tiniest little kiddie train ride and I thought Jerad might give her to another family he was so annoyed. I have at least ten pictures of her covering her ears like this:

Or her eyes like this:

At least she is cute.

Here we all are with Mickey:

Evan really enjoyed this Jedi Training show with all the characters from Star Wars. (This was one of the times Carly was covering her eyes.) Evan was really brave and rode all kinds of big kid rides now too. I guess we are all getting older. He loved it all and was a very good traveller. (It takes a long time to get to California, but they were all just awesome the whole way there and the whole way back).

Evan's favorite part of the trip was when we went to Legoland. I am going to post that next time.

Here is my family getting ready to go on the Small World ride, the happiest cruise on Earth and Carly did make it through that.

But she would have rather been off meeting another princess: Here is Tiana from Princess and the Frog. A New One!

Last, but not least, I must share the picture on the Dumbo ride. You have to ride this no matter how old you are.

Even I rode it at age 37.

We really had a fabulous time at all the Disney Parks. Clark was there to guide us the whole time and make sure we were out the door by 7:15 am. (Thanks Jerad) The kids did great as we didn't even have a stroller! I bet Little Miss Ally was probably walking 3 or 4 miles a day. I would have never thought that was possible, but she has really been building her strength back up. (The swim team has been tremendous in helping her to build back up some muscle.)

And so, that is a very scaled down set of our Disney pictures. Thank you Tara and Bunk for watching the entire slide show in our family room the other day. Hah! I do have to include one more, because I thought it told the story for us quite well: