"Palm trees, ocean breeze, Standing by the clear blue sea, Hot air, Sunkissed hair, Endless summer, Take me there"

Well the time has almost come for us to leave California! We've had so much fun here and are very sad to leave. The weather has been wonderful (well it's been a bit cold the past couple days but oh well, how many people can complain about cold right now? :), we've been to a lot of fun places, seen lots of family, made some good friends, and it's just been great! I can't believe how fast its gone by, seems like yesterday we got here.

For our last weekend we didn't do anything to crazy. We went back to Point Dume and took some of the trails on top of the cliff and walked along those for awhile. It was pretty neat though cuz this time we actually saw seals and we saw a lot of dolphins. We saw 7 or 8 while we were driving along the coast and then from Point Dume we saw about 6 playing in the water. It was so neat! They were jumping and swimming around and it was fun to watch them. Unfortunately a stupid helicopter came around and scared them away. Lame!

After that we went down to the beach for a bit and walked a bit more down there. Mark went up into the cave we saw last time cuz he wanted to see how far it went but he didn't go too far. We had fun though and enjoyed going to the beach for the last time! Good thing we're in the Navy and will be by the coast 95% of the time! :)

After we got back from the beach we went to the theater on base and saw the Prince of Persia, which I thought was pretty good. Evelyn slept almost the entire movie which was great. Then Sunday we went to church and afterwards Terrie and Michael came up to see us one last time before we left, which was great! They had lots of fun playing with Evelyn and she liked having someone new to play with too.

So that pretty much sums up our last weekend here. I've been packing, organizing, and getting stuff ready to go all this week so nothing really to say about all that! It was a bit cool the beginning of the week but today has been nice and sunny and 65 and wonderful! I'm really gonna miss this mild weather, especially when we get to Mississippi :( Anywho...I gotta get back to packing now. This will probably be the last post for awhile, til we get to Mississippi and get internet anyway. So hope you all have a good next two weeks or so! Ours is gonna be busy, busy, busy!

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway. --Walt Disney--

“To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past...and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America...with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

--Walt Disney, Disneyland dedication speech, July 17, 1955

What Mark and I didn't know on Saturday was that it was Disneyland's 55th anniversary, which attributed to the busyness of the place, although I don't know how different it was from any other Saturday. There were a lot of people though! We went to the park around 9, left around 12:30 for a break (Auntie Denise and her fam/friends were having a bowling b-day celebration for one of the other little girls so we met up with them so she could meet Mark and also so Evelyn could have a break from her stroller), then we came back and stayed at the park til 10pm!

Right as we were leaving for our lunch time break we noticed a big crowd at the beginning of Main Street. The President of Disneyland was rededicating the park or something like that for the 55th anniversary. This is a pic of him below.

They also had one of their top security guys come speak because he also happened to be one of the first kids to run across the bridge at Sleeping Beauty's Castle on that first day. It was neat to hear him relate his experience from that. We didn't stay for the whole ceremony so I don't really know what the president had to say.

Here's a few pics of us by the opening gate and Sleeping Beauty's Castle. I do have to apologize for the lengthiness of this post...I knew it would be long starting out but didn't realize it was gonna be this big!

These two were actually taken when we were waiting for the bus at the hotel. Evelyn and Mark were blowing raspberries and seeing who could do it better :) It was just funny

We of course, had to go on Pirates again, this is us waiting in line. Evelyn did fairly good, still didn't like that mist part but never cried so that was good. I loved seeing all the pirates on the ride though, especially Captain Jack. They did such a wonderful job on him, he looked so lifelike!

We tried to go on rides where Evelyn could ride too and the good thing about Disneyland is that there are a lot of them! We took her next on the Toy Story ride. It was an interactive ride where you use a laser gun and try to get points by shooting Zurg's enemy targets. I was holding Evelyn so it was hard for me to get very many of them so Mark totally kicked my butt pointwise (see pic below).

This was taken while we were waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion, which Evelyn also went on. I think she was a little spooked on that one, mostly because it was so dark but she still did good, just tensed up a bit. It was a fun ride though!

We didn't catch the main parade but we did get to see the Dance Celebration one. It had a lot of characters and lots of dancing so it was fun to watch. We did see a lot of characters that day but unfortunately didn't get to have any pictures taken with them :(

For dinner we had made a reservation at the Blue Bayou, which is in the New Orleans part of the park and also right inside the Pirates ride! It was such a cool atmosphere and I really enjoyed it. The food was a bit expensive but was really good and it was just something fun and out of the ordinary to do and probably won't have many chances to go there so what the heck! :)

We had them take a pic before we left but you can't really see the cool background cuz it's so dark.

One of the shows was the Enchanted Tiki Room, which was also a lot of fun. The best part was watching Evelyn, she just loved it! She was fascinated by the birds and flowers and everything and just stared the whole time.

Another ride Evelyn LOVED was the "It's a Small World". She doesn't look too happy in this pic below but she did really like it. She just kept looking around at all the little people and was enthralled. I thought it was neat with all the different nationalities and such but it was so looong! Got a bit annoying after a bit but still fun to go through and look at.

That night we found a spot in New Orleans to watch the night show, Fantastmic. It's a show in Mickey's dream where the evil witch from Sleeping Beauty tries to take over but of course, good conquers evil and all is well. It was a fun show with lots of characters, fireworks, water effects, and lots of other things. They even had a pirate ship come through with Hook and Peter Pan fighting. Very cool.

We were gonna watch the fireworks but unfortunately "prevailing high winds" ruined that for us. We were disappointed though cuz they have an awesome firework show! We saw a little bit the night before when we were driving back from the train station but didn't stay out to watch it cuz we thought we would see it Saturday but oh well! Guess we'll just have to go back another time :)

We had a wonderful weekend though and I'm so glad we got to do it before we left and I'm really glad Mark was able to enjoy it with us! Evelyn was such a trooper and did so well for being cooped up in a stroller most of the time! I really do look forward to going again when she's older. Hopefully we'll be able to go to Disney World next time to mix it up a bit!

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world. --Walt Disney--

I actually don't know where to begin with this post because there is just so much to go over! I just might have to split it into two blogs...I'll just have to see how far I make it before getting too sleepy to finish :)

Ok...Friday morning Evelyn and I packed up and drove down to Anaheim again, to meet Denise and her fam again and go to Disneyland! We got there and wondered around a bit and looked at things until everyone else got there and then spent the rest of the day with them. Evelyn enjoyed seeing all the little girls and even enjoyed a couple rides we went on.

The first ride I took Evelyn on was the Jungle Cruise, which was just a little trip around a river with some "animals" and such to see (none of them were real). It was nice and relaxing and not too scary for Evelyn and the younger girls.

Don't they look excited?

The next ride we went on was Pirates of the Caribbean! Evelyn was actually asleep when we first got on but after the two initial drops woke up. She didn't cry or anything, which was good, but got a little scared at a couple parts and just buried her head in my shoulder and tensed up. She really didn't like this one part where the boat passed through a "waterfall" with Davie Jone's head talking on it. It was really just a foggy mist thing, but she really did not want to go through it! Kinda funny though...

(The scary mist :)

We didn't meet as many characters that day but we did go meet Jasmine and Aladdin and saw Princess Tiana do a little show in the New Orleans area which was fun. The girls were all excited to see them which was fun to watch. Although at Disneyland it's not only the kids that get excited to see different characters and stuff, which just makes everything so much more wonderful and magical!

Princess Tiana

Aladdin and Jasmine!

So cute!

I didn't get to meet Mary Poppins but we saw her walking around Town Square when we were taking a break.

After awhile Denise and the little kids went off to the kiddie rides and I went with some of the "big" kids to ride some big kids rides. Disney has a "rider swap" pass for people with little kids that can't go on the rides so they all went through the line and after they got off me and one of them went right back on and rode it. So great! We went on "Star Tours" which was Star Wars of course and was pretty fun. It was a kind of a virtual ride and made me kinda woozy when I got off but still fun!

Then the next, and last ride of the day for me, was Space Mountain, which was AWESOME!!! I've always wanted to go on a ride where it was pitch black and you couldn't tell what was coming up and this was a fulfillment of that dream! Well it wasn't all black cuz there were "stars" and such but that was cool too. It is now in my top five favorite roller coasters though. So fun!!!

After that it was getting a bit later so Evelyn and I left and went to check in our hotel, shower and cool down (it was RIDICULOUSLY hot and I just felt disgusting and sweaty by the time we left), and then went to pick up Mark. He had class on Friday so he took the Amtrak down to Anaheim and we picked him up. He said riding Amtrak was a lot better than taking a bus and was actually a cool way to travel. I've never been on Amtrak but have been on trains so I believe him :)

Anywho...that pretty much sums up all of Friday. It was a lot of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to the magical World of Disney! I very much look forward to taking Evelyn when she is bigger and can enjoy it as well and remember it. Here's some pics of her though so she can look back and see how cute she was! :)

Her tooth! :)

Despite how hot it was, Evelyn HAD to have her blankie with her to sleep and of course her blankie of choice is the really warm fuzzy one. Luckily she can get by with just a corner to hold in her hands!