for a few months in the fall, ian and i had a big secret that we kept from our big boys: we were taking them to disneyland!! we told them about it just a couple hours before we took off to drop off the babies with my sister and go to the airport. they were pretty excited:

the airport and flight felt like such a breeze with just our five-year-old and three-year-old! we stayed at budget inn, just outside the park, and lucked out to see the entire disneyland fireworks show after we’d put the boys to bed. (this was the last night of fireworks for a while and i was bummed we didn’t get to see them in the park – this was a great consolation prize!)

we walked to disneyland to be there right at opening (passing the epic lego store at downtown disney – where mo later spent some of his hard-earned cash – on the way).

pretty exciting to run down main street toward the castle!

as per the boys’ request, we headed straight to space mountain (which happens to be, by far, my favourite ride). we all had a blast riding it – twice in a row! then on to buzz lightyear (it cracked me up how serious ian was about earning points on that ride, hahaha!), and the new star wars rides, and peter pan (so so fun to fly over london together!), and splash mountain (which the boys fiercely hated, haha – they just really didn’t like getting wet!).

another one of my favourites: dumbo!! this ride was closed when we went to disneyland paris so i was especially excited to take our boys on it.

no disneyland trip is complete without a few meltdowns (see gabriel below), or some earnest attempts for a good group/family photo, right?!

we splurged on some mickey-shaped treats, and gabriel conked out in the stroller after that ^^ meltdown. we used the time during his nap to trade off riding the few rides that he wasn’t quite tall enough for (the height requirement on most of the big rides is 40 inches and gabe was just exactly 40.05 inches!). i loved showing moses a photo of him at the real matterhorn as we waiting in line to ride the matterhorn ride.

the teacups are just magic. the boys liked spinning in them more than the parents did though (cue queasiness!).

awesome 3d glasses, and a run-in with goofy at toon town!

we didn’t go in the haunted mansion because the line was super long, but i loved how perfectly spooky it looked, on that day which was the day after halloween! after riding a few more tomorrowland rides, moses took his turn conking out in the stroller and gabriel got to ride some adventureland rides with daddy. i also want to remember that in the middle of the day we met up with our friend katie, who we knew from both our palo alto days and our london days, and her little girls – so fun to see old friends at the happiest place on earth! we stayed until almost closing, and got to wave goodnight to goofy and mickey on the way out!

the next day we went to california adventure. we had such a blast; i hardly took any photos! the boys loved every second and we just relished being with just the two of them and having fun together.

meeting spiderman was definitely a highlight!

also, the boys loved the soaring around the world ride (i don’t have a photo, but we rode it three times and it was super fun for everyone). we opted to not wait the nearly two hours to ride the main cars ride, but i loved this one with such cute, fun dancing cars!

another highlight was doing a drawing class at the animation studios. moses was so into it!

monsters, inc., line waiting with some activities mommy had packed, seeing elsa…

and our last ride of the day and our trip was a second time on the new spiderman web slingers ride. all three of the boys were soooo into it, and i had fun too 🙂 we lucked out to be able to go twice – they limit everyone in the park to just one go, but at the end of the day they opened it up for anyone that was nearby. it was the perfect way to end our disneyland adventure (along with seeing pluto on our way out!).

it was two days of pure, unadulterated childhood joy.