Disneyland!

I'm going to be honest with you; 

Disneyland intimidates me. 

I've always wanted to take our kids there, but all the planning...the dining plans and fast passes and picture packages...it stresses me out just thinking about it. I'm a PLANNER and that is just TOO MUCH PLANNING for me. 

I know they have people to assist you with the planning, but really? Is that where we're at? I need a Disney employee (albeit for free, but STILL) to help me plan my vacation? And I have very specific times I have to be at very specific places, or I miss out on what I've paid for? 

That's not how I like to roll on vacation.

So when we knew we were gonna be in Paris for four nights, I nagged asked Dave if we could squeeze in a day at Disneyland, both because I thought it would be super fun and because then we could check "Disneyland" off our Parental To Do List, for at least another five years, and check it off the easy way ;). Disneyland Paris is a much smaller version of Disneyland in CA, and so we felt like we could see the majority of it in one day. 

(Some days - when I've had lots of sleep and lots of coffee and feel energetic and hopeful and generally like I could take on the world - I dream about a big, family trip to Disneyland. Cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, for like five whole days! Wouldn't that be fun!! Everyone would have a blast!! And smile the whole time!!! And NO ONE WOULD WHINE ABOUT ANYTHING THE ENTIRE VACATION!!!!)

For now, for this season in life, Disneyland Paris with for just the four of us was perfect =). We had a blast, we smiled the majority of the time, and while whining did occur, it was minimal.

So, on Monday morning, we got up and got ready to spend the day Disney-Style!

We hopped the Metro and made our way to Disneyland Paris. I couldn't help but smile as our little globe-trotters had become experts at the Metro by this stage in the game, and put their tickets in and went through the gates without any assistance from their parents...

After about an hours ride, we finally MADE IT!!!

As you can see by my cheesy grin in the below picture, I was the most excited out of all four of us, to be sure.

This was the kids' first trip to any Disney park, so they had very limited expectations, and Dave was on board for the day like the trooper dad he is, but I was GIDDY excited. 

Our first ride was the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast...

Since it was a Monday, the lines weren't too bad. We waited about 40 minutes, which was hard being it our first ride, but luckily excitement was high =).

I LOVE Sister's little pose here...

Disney knows what they are doing. 

They had several different attractions to keep you entertained while you waited in line!

Our inaugural ride at Disneyland!!

After that, Sister and I rode on Oribtron...

While Sister and I did the slow moving ride, the boys went on fast rides...

It's Wall-E and Eva!!!!

Then.

THEN!

We got to meet Darth Vader!!!!

He was TALL and very serious. I suggested he just consider coming back from the Dark Side and he did not take kindly to such talk.

They had fancy Disney photographers in there and you could pay to purchase a really good copy of your pictures, but we're too cheap for that ;). 
So these are a bit blurry, but we remember it well!

We went to the Star Wars gift shop, and let each kid pick out a new Light Saber...

The entire Star Wars area was pretty impressive!

This Star Wars loving boy was over the moon happy, and that made the rest of us so happy as well!

We ate lunch in a Star Wars restaurant...

Then we split up again so the boys could do the wilder things and Sister and I could do things more chill. As much as we wanted to make this a "family day", it just worked better when we divided up. Everyone was happier.

"It's a Small World" was actually closed, this day, but we grabbed a pic anyways =)...

Sister loves her a carousel...

After that, the two of us girls made our way over for the afternoon Disney Princess live show...

Sister was enthralled with this little show! She stood with rapt attention and enjoyed every moment. 

Directly after this, she declared she wanted to spend the rest of her spending money on a Princess Jasmine doll, so we made our way over to that gift shop =)

While we were doing that, the boys drove cars at Autotopia...

We met up together to ride the train around the park...

While we waited in line for the train, Sister caught Dave up on the Princess Show we watched...

We took the obligatory pictures in front of Cinderella's castle...

Such a special day with our seven year olds!

Sister gave Jasmine a shoulder ride around the park...

We paired off differently so I could take Brother on my very favorite ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

We snapped this pic mid-ride and were pretty proud of ourselves ;)

He ended up loving the ride as well, which made for a fun memory for me and my boy...

We all walked around Agrabah (Aladdin's country)...

Tried to pull the Sword outta the Stone...

We went over and climbed up the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse...

When I was a kid I LOVED that movie, and we showed it to the kids while we were in Kuwait, and they liked it too, so climbing their treehouse in Disneyland was really fun.

We walked around the park a bit more, then went back to the Buzz Lightyear area's gift shop for Brother to spend the rest of his money on a Buzz Lightyear light up sword thing he'd seen earlier in the day, and then decided that since it was after 8:00pm, we better start thinking about making the one+ hours trek back to our beds for the night. 
(Okay so honestly, I'd toyed with the idea of staying through the 11pm fireworks show, but David gently suggested that was a crazy bad  perhaps not a wise parenting idea, as we'd been going going going the last few days, just experienced a major life change by moving from Kuwait, and had to be up early in the morning to pack and hop a train to our next destination...and I had to acknowledge that *maybe* he was right...)

We grabbed some hot dogs and called it a day...

Goodbye Disneyland! We loved you!!