Three Musketeers: Zachary, Wyatt, & Yannick: DISNEYLAND!!!!

Poppi arrived on Friday night, to help out with the boys while Art was in China for 10 days. On a whim, we decided to quickly throw together a trip to Disneyland. We decided this on Saturday morning, with the plan to leave Monday after school, to spend all day Tuesday and Wednesday at the two parks. A crazy plan, but it worked. I purchased a route-planning app, and that was a MAJOR help. I had routess planned for both days, food for lunches and snacks, a hotel booked (with a pool!), and tickets purchased. The tickets were printed out along with directions a mere 3 hours before we left. We decided to pick the boys up a bit before the end of school, so we left around 1:30 instead of 3:30. Good decision. Here is a fun little story: The morning of our departure, I ran to the produce store to stock up on fruit for our trip. AND LOCKED THE KEYS IN THE CAR!! I called several friends, but no one answered, so I walked home (about 2 miles), in FLIP FLOPS! Uggh. I got home, got the spare key, and went next door to ask for a ride to the store. I ended up chatting with a lady in the street before knocking on the neighbor's door, and she offered to take me. Praise God! Time was tight, I did not have a ton of time to get the car, run the errands, and get Wyatt to school on time. However, of course she lived halfway up Voss, the road that goes STRAIGHT UP! Still grateful! The funny part is that I had to sit in the backseat because the lady's dog was sitting in the front seat. I got a call from a friend then, but was already taken care of. So I got about 90min behind schedule. Eek! Still ok! We got everything taken car of, car packed, and picked the boys up. So exciting! I brought all Disney movies in the car to get them more familiar with the characters before we saw them at the park. Not often would Dad or I throw together a quick-and-dirty vacation of this magnitute, but at this time of year, park nearly "empty", it was no problem. We were even able to get a Motel 6 for Dad! His complaint was that it was a bit too high end with it's hardwood (looking) floors and high(er) end fixtures. :) They also offered (for a fee) shuttle service to and from the parks. Yes!

After our visit, I put together a photo book for Poppi and the boys to each have one. Because of that detail, I am not going to give a lot of detail in this post. Double work, no thank you!

I had packed dinner for the boys to eat in the car, and it was a long ride. I was so so nervous about the famous LA traffic, but The Lord blessed us with almost no traffic! We got to the hotel around 7pm. I got us set up (brought the pack-n-play for Nick which infuriated him!) and we all went to the pool to get some of their energy out. It was pretty chilly! The hot tub was glorious, but Nick hated it. As we were getting stuff ready for tomorrow and getting into bed, I realized that I had walked out without Peanut Butter and bread!!! PANIC! That was to be our lunches!! Ack! My poor tired brain could not fathom how to fix this (um hello, there are STORES in CA), and as a result, I did not sleep so well. Poppi came to the rescue and bought plastic ware, bread and PB the next morning while he was out exercising. Of course - go buy supplies! :) Good thing one of us had a working brain. I think I was just in so much shock that I had FORGOTTEN them. ME! With my lists and prepwork and OCD brain! must.relax. I did realize that we could just buy food at the parks, but that was so against what I wanted/planned, that my brain short circuited. Needless to say, thanks to dad's quick thinking, I got our lunches, snacks, sunscreen, hats, diaper bag, water bottles packed and ready to go. Easy peasy. :)

Tuesday morning, everyone ready to go, waiting for the 9am shuttle. Poppi has been waiting for this day (to take grandkids to Disney) for 7 years! So excited to make this happen!

Poppi & three boys (one hidden in the double stroller) at the Disneyland entrance.

This was a common sight for me. In my mind my main job was to make sure that Poppi had a great time with Zachary and Wyatt. Yannick, still young, was a wildcard, and I wanted to make sure I took the burden of appeasing him. Nick was in the stroller and Poppi was walking with the two big kids 85% of the time.

Castle! A bit smaller than the one in Florida, but still great!

Zachary, Wyatt, and Poppi taking off in the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

The first ride Yannick liked - Dumbo!

Wyatt and Poppi in a Dumbo

Zachary's first ride by himself! when did he get so big??

terrible attempt to get the 3 to pose

All of us in Casey's Circus train ride. This was a popular look for Yannick - hands over ears. Sigh. Any time he felt aprehensive, those hands would go up over the ears. We waited in line for this ride forever - way too long to be worth it. The sign and my App both said less than 5min wait, but something went awry.

One of the BIG things I did NOT want to miss was Jedi Training Academy. There is no guarantee your child will get picked, but I prepped them the best I could. They were wearing bright shirts, and jumped up and down and screamed. AND THEY WERE PICKED!! So wonderful! I was nearly in tears I was so excited! It was a very professional and well done show, and they loved it!

ZW wearing their jedi robes

waiting for jedi instructions

Both have their lightsabers

"Engage" Training has begun

They learned a "routine" that would be used when they battled a bad guy (which we did NOT know they would get to do, and I nearly jumped out of my skin it was so awesome!)

Uh oh! Storm troopers!

Darth Vadar is on the scene

As is Darth Maul.

All the big kids got in a line on the ground to battle Darth Maul, and the little kids got in line to go on the stage to battle Darth Vadar. So great!

All the jedi that were picked

Buzz's Astro Blasters - a GREAT ride. No line, enjoyable.

By the end, Yannick loved it so much, that it was our "go-to" ride in TomorrowLand. He and I would ride it while ZWP rode big kid stuff. I think Yannick rode it 7 or 8 times during the day.

Poppi and ZW at Autotopia. Originally Zachary was in the car with Yannick and I, but Nick had fallen asleep (heavy!), and they would not let him on the ride. So Z went to the car with Poppi and Wyatt. Wyatt, great generous Wyatt, let Zachary drive. This ride had a long wait, partly in the hot sun, so we were NOT going to do it again. It was special because Dad had ridden this very ride when he was 7 at Disneyland. Amazing!!

Yannick took a good 2 hour nap.

Poppi stayed with sleeping Nick while I took ZW on Finding Nemo submarine ride (used to be 20,000 Leagues under the sea). Something went wrong while we were in line, and the entire thing (line & ride) took us about 45 minues. About 25 minutes longer than we expected.

Silly! 3 boys in the double stroller after we had ice cream snack at the Golden Horseshoe. This did not last long b/c they were uncomfortable.

Zachary bravely riding by himself again. We are back in Tomorrowland at the end of the day. Several rides I wanted to do in Frontierland had already closed, so we headed back here so Wyatt could ride these. he was disappointed to miss them earlier in the day.

Wyatt loved it. Yannick and I did not. Zachary kept yelling from the sidelines to "go up", but nope, Yannick and I were the only rocket to stay at the lowest level. :)

Dad took Wyatt and Yannick to ride Buzz's Astro Blasters so I could ride Star Tours with Zachary for the last time (Poppi had ridden it twice with ZW already). Sadly, Buzz was closed but they got to watch the Color Parade at the park's closing, which Z and I missed. Totally worth it, bc the operator let us "ride" twice without getting out of our seats. Love it!!

Headed back to the hotel around 7:30, let the boys and Poppi swim while I made some PB sandwiches for dinner, then off to bed!

The 4 guys on the shuttle bus

Wednesday was set aside for Adventure Park.

Cool movie set in HollywoodLand. We had to walk through here to get to Bugs Life land.

A ladybug ride similar to the teacups, but spun slowly. Yannick LOVED this ride! Finally! He hated being in every line in Bugs Land because they had the sound of bees over the speakers. sigh. But he loved all the rides. This was a favorite land for all three boys.

In Tuck and Roll bumper cars

Wyatt driving with Poppi

Little guy driving!

Big guy by himself

Cute, relaxing Heimlich ride. So interesting because as you would pass some food, they had the smell piped in somehow. It really did smell like watermelon and animal crackers!

Cars Land!

Poppi and boys at Radiator Springs. I was possibly the most excited of everyone at this land!

Looked just like the movies! So great!

Leaning tower of tires!

Flying tire ride. A bit difficult, but ok. Line was long.

Flo's V8 Cafe

COZY CONE motel!

Boys checking out Mater

And Lightning McQueen

Mater's ride. Cute, but pretty fast.

And unplanned stop for Little Mermaid. A great ride, no wait. We did it back to back, then later in the day.

ZW going by themselves on Jumping Jellyfish. Poppi had to ride by himself.

The longest ride we waited for. The reviews for this ride were amazing - it was not to be missed. The wait was long, but worth it! I think Dad would like to go again so HE could shoot at stuff!

3D ride! Even Yannick wore the glasses!

Ooooo, Nick is so so mad because he did not want to ride on this animal, but I wanted us all on the same row.

All of us riding on King Tritan's carosel. Again, no wait!

On our way to a different land, we took a break to watch the Five & Dime traveling band. Enjoyable!

Then, around 3pm, Yannick finally fell asleep in his stroller! Dad took ZW to Monster's Inc ride, then I went with them. Dad offered to sit with sleeping Yannick and I took ZW to see the Muppet 4D show.

They liked it ok, but did not love it.

After that, Yannick was still sleeping as we made our way to our 4pm Ice Cream break (a sugar rush to take them to 7pm when the park would close!). Ice Cream ended up being the only food/drink we bought at the park on both days. I worked out really well to have our lunch and snacks with us. More prep effort, but way easier than having to find something and somewhere to eat when you are ready.

For the record, our photobooks have all my pictures plus all of the pictures Dad took, and he got some good ones!

After ice cream, we had some time left and Wyatt really pushed to go try to do the Toy Story ride again. Unfortunately, the wait time now was even longer than before (45+min), so we couldn't do it. Wyatt was pretty disappointed! Instead, they decided they wanted to do the Ferris Wheel (Mickey's Wheel of Fun) There were two options: stable car, or swinging car. Of course they wanted the swinging car. UGGH! I don't kow what Zachary liked better, the ride, or how much I hated the ride. :) They wanted to do it again, but the wait was long (and I hated the ride), that I decided now was a good time to go get souviners. We looked in one shop, but they didn't see what they loved, so we walked back to the front of the park where the main shopping area was. Jackpot! Zachary struggled to decide what to get. I think he made the right choice. I knew since day 1 what we would get for Yannick, however, at 6:45pm, after a long day, he was a bit of a challenge. He had played with Buzz's blaster in every store we visited, from the ride which he loved. Easy choice. Once we were at the store, he had a MASSIVE meltdown wanting a LARGE blaster. I told him that it was for kids over 5 years old, and he was on the floor, screaming "I'm 5, I'm REALLY REALLY 5". Finally, after screaming and carrying on, Dad removed him from the store and went to people watch. Amazingly he calmed down, and I was able to get the toys for the other boys and some for myself. Then to the shuttle, praise The Lord it was there waiting for us, back to the hotel, in the car. It was 8pm at this point, and no one had had dinner yet (yet no one super hungry thanks to ice cream and super-snack-mom!) Dad remember seeing a Subway on his excercise route - PERFECT! We got the food, and headed out of LA. We did not have an idea how long we would drive, but getting out of LA was the main goal for tomorrow's traffic. Then, SHOCK!!, Dad drove the ENTIRE way home. We arrived at 3am!!! Amazing!! this meant that the boys did not miss school the next day (Z was a teensy bit late)! Dad is a machine!

An amazing trip!! Thanks to Dad for funding it! With the photobooks, it will be a trip that will be talked of and remembered for their lives!