Disneyland, Disneyland, DISNEYLAND!

Melissa and Ernie went on a cruise at the end of March. Emerson & I flew down to Las Vegas to help with Ernie and Caleb while their parents were gone. We successfully made it to all the football games, birthday parties, cub scout day camps, and we made it to 9 am church with all 3 boys ready and happy, 5 minutes early. Plus everyones bags and food packed for our 3 day excursion to California. Solo parent with 3 boys = exhausting. I was defiantly missing my partner in crime, Mark. My amazing mom came over and we packed up and headed to Sunny California. (My dad had some church meetings he couldn't miss so he flew in later that night...lucky)

 Disneyland Bound!

We made it to the hotel and had a lovely evening of swimming, Emerson wasn't a huge fan of the pool, it was a little chilly, but he loved the hot tub. He would sit and yell "Ernie, Ernie, Ernie!" until the boys , who were in the pool, would look at him and then he would wave. He sure loves his cousins. 

He loved the elevator - I think that was his favorite part of the trip.

We got all settled in to bed early for our big day in Disneyland the next day. Around midnight I heard an alarm and voice come on that said" There has been an emergency in the hotel, please evac...." and then it cut out. I got up and looked out my door and a lot of people were streaming out of their rooms and headed to the elevators, ironically. Then the loud alarm again and "There has been an emergency in the hotel, please evacuate immediately" came on again and finished. This time it woke Emerson up, so I quickly grabbed him and his blanket, grabbed my shoes and then woke little Ernie up who was staying in our room. We left the room and went to my parents room, I knocked until my dad answered who hadn't heard the alarm (  really, the really loud fire alarm?) So he went into a little bit of a panic mode, he doesn't handle stress well plus he worked on the MGM fire case in the 80's and has a fear of hotel fires now) He was trying to get Caleb out of bed, who is a really deep sleeper, we would pull Caleb up and he would flop back down, it was pretty funny to think about after the fact. We all rushed down the stairs to the lobby where we found out that it was just someone smoking in their room and set the fire alarm off. So we had to wait for the fire station to come and shut it down. Everyone there was families going to Disneyland so there were tons of crying babies and kids, it was a little chaotic. But thankfully it was nothing serious.

 Mapping out the day

The next morning we got to Disneyland right at opening, this allowed us to walk right on to rides for about the first hour. My mom and I went straight to Fantastyland with Emerson, while my dad took the boys to ride space mountain. We rode Dumbo, Tea Cups, and Storyland right away without waiting. Emerson liked it, but was pretty expressionless on the actual ride. Just taking it all in, but he would clap or laugh once it stopped. He loved pointing to everything and loooved seeing Mickey but it didn't like being close to him and gave him a high five instead of a hug.

Mickey's House was his favorite in toon town.

Tarzan's Tree House was a big hit!

Jungle Cruise was great - he did throw his water bottle in the water, but the workers were so nice and fished it out for us and because the jungle water wasn't drinkable they had to dump out the contents of the water bottle. They kept apologizing that they had to dump it out and gave us a voucher for everyone in our party to get a free drink.... Uh pretty sure my kid threw his water bottle into the water. I love Disneyland, they are the nicest.

The Tikki Room was by far his favorite - not sure if the pineapple spears or pineapple ice cream had anything to do with that.

We would swap watching Emerson and going on rides with the boys. Emerson did great in the park, way better then I could of imagined, and napped great.

We went back to the hotel to rest and grab dinner. Emerson passed out when I set him on the bed to take his shoes off. He was exhausted, and napped about 1.5 hrs and then we headed back for round two.

1st day of Disneyland was a success!