Christmas 2010 present to boys...trip to Disneyland!

A big part of the excitement for this trip was having the boys fly on an airplane. They always mention how cool it would be to do that so I couldn't wait for them to be able to experience it. They were so ready to get on the plane after waiting for awhile at the airport.

When we boarded, the pilot invited the boys into the cockpit and sit in the "drivers seat". Carter loved it. Max, not so much. For some reason he was a little nervous to drive such a large piece of machinery. :)


After we checked into our hotel, we walked through Downtown Disney.



Tuesday morning we woke up ready to hit the park. Well, most of us were ready. After taking the shuttle from our hotel to the gate, I discovered that I had forgotten my ID, which I needed to redeem my voucher for our tickets. They turned us away and I made a trip back to the hotel while Matt waited at the gate. Of course, we picked a day to go that 159,996 other people decided to go and the shuttles took forever to get there. Matt called me about an hour after I had left to get my ID and told me to call him when I was 5 minutes away so he could jump in line to pick up our tickets. He said they had stopped selling tickets and were turning people away. We had already bought tickets, we just had to redeem the voucher. But Matt said he talked to an employee that said they'd eventually have to stop redeeming those! Luckily I made it and we entered the park after a small hour and a half delay.

Despite the crowd, Disneyland at Christmas time was incredible. Absolutely beautiful! Max's wheelchair saved us some time in the lines so the record breaking crowd didn't effect us too much. We did still have to wait, but most rides had wheelchair lines. When we got into one of the lines, Carter asked, "Is this the cerebral palsy line?"



This is my absolute favorite picture because of the look on Max's face. He was SO excited to meet Mickey and his friends.



After going on Autotopia, Max would not stop talking about how he won the car race, that people were cheering for him and that he won the trophy. It was really cute.





We thought we'd sneak in one more ride on Pirates of the Caribean before calling it a night, but Carter didn't even make it through the line. I tried waking him up when we got on the ride, but he wouldn't budge.

The next morning we woke up to rain. But we were prepared with ponchos and umbrellas and it actually turned out to be a good thing. It seemed to scare away a lot of people, then stopped raining after a couple hours. It was a little chilly, but wasn't too bad.



This was Carter at the end of the 2nd day. Need I say more?

After 2 days at Disneyland, we rented a car and drove to Carlsbad to spend a couple days at Legoland. Within minutes of arriving at our second hotel, Carter managed to find the TV remote and took it upon himself to order a not so cheap movie to watch. Lucky for all of us, it was not one from the adult category.







They had an area where you could build your own racecar then race it against other peoples' creations.

I LOVED all the lego buildings in Miniland. SO incredible!





Of course, the boys couldn't pass up the opportunity to play a little XBOX.






The 2nd day we were there on New Year's Eve. Thay had a party complete with a band, fireworks and a big lego brick that dropped at 6:00. Yes, our "midnight" happened at 6 PM. It was briliant! They handed out glasses that made the lights you looked at have a lego "glow" around them. It made the fireworks look awesome!


All in all, a fabulous and much needed vacation! While driving to the Long Beach airport, we were talking about how nice it was there. Just for fun I asked Carter if he'd ever want to live there. His response?
"Hmmmmm.... well, if I could bring our Wii and Wii games then yes. If I couldn't bring them then no." I think someone has a problem.