D-Land and Kite Flying?

Pose for a nice picture in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle for just one second?
"No way mom! I just want to bolt into the middle of the crowds and run as fast as I can! "

The week after New Years, Scott's work was pretty slow so he got the day off on a Thursday. Ivy was scheduled to go to her day care, and I already had the day off. We contemplated sticking to the schedule and sending Ivy away for the day so Scott and I could have a VERY RARE day off together. Instead, we decided to use my passes to Disneyland that I still have when I worked there years ago, and headed on over to the happiest place on earth. (These tickets are now worth about $89 each and I still have 9 left! They get us into both Disneyland and California Adventure.)
Ivy had a lot of fun, except I really think that at her age, it gets a little frustrating not having anywhere to run free. We had to hold her hand constantly, not to loose her in the crowd, and she never wanted to ride in the stroller for even 5 minutes like we had wished. (The stroller was a great carry-all though for all of our gear because we had to come rain prepared. It never did rain that day though.) Once we were in line for a ride though, she was much more patient than I had thought she would be. She pretty much got that we had to wait behind everyone else and would get a cool surprise at the end! Here we are eating Pineapple Dole Whip before entering the Tiki Room. I think this was one of all of our favorites!
The most embarrassing moment that day was when I took Ivy to the bathroom with me. She was really cooperative at first, handing me toilet paper and not touching anything else. When it was time to put on a fresh diaper on her though, she started to refuse and throw a fit. I was struggling with her to pull her pants down and get a new diaper on when she started the back arching, thrashing and as I lost my balance and fell into the side wall of the stall, it made a crashing sound and shook everyone else's stall. Then she started to yell, "You're choking me mom! Stop hurting me!" This is her favorite saying to yell in public lately, even though we are no where near her throat. FUN! FUN!

Santa gave me a new camera for Christmas with some cool special effects. I was trying out a color select option while in line for the Haunted Mansion that was transformed into A Nightmare Before Christmas. Ivy really liked this ride because she has watched the video about 50 times recently.


I was in the rocket shop in front of Scott and Ivy taking the photo. I had to put the camera away though and hold on tight instead. It really whips you around and goes really high! This ain't no Dumbo!
Pluto! Ivy's first "Character Experience".

Now update from today. It was a beautiful day today and Scott has been promising Ivy to go fly a kite. We headed down to Main Street in Seal Beach, bought this pretty purple one (for too much $) and tried to launch it. The winds were so calm though that the only way to get it up in the air was to run really fast. Since Ivy couldn't run fast enough, Scott decided to carry her while he ran. It was really fun. It's supposed to be windy tomorrow, so maybe we will have better luck. The greatest part of today though was what a great dad Scott was to fly a kit with his daughter, instead of going surfing like everyone else on the beach was doing. The waves were really big today!