Disneyland, Day One!

Waiting in line patiently for his first ride : )

Afternoon nap!

Picking his car. . .

Picking his rims. . .

"Helping" Brian put the car together. . .

The finished product!

We went to Disneyland this past weekend and had a great time! We stayed in a hotel Saturday night so that we didn't have to be super rushed and get everything done in one day.

The first day we did a few rides at Disneyland first. JJ seemed to enjoy the rides and was mainly looking around and observing everything. We had been telling him we would meet Mickey Mouse, but weren't really sure if we were going to. Normally there is a huge line and we did not want to wait in line, but we ended up being amazingly lucky! We went to ToonTown in the afternoon and when we walked into Mickey's house, there weren't very many people in there, although the wait said it was 60 minutes to see Mickey. I came to the conclusion that he must be taking his lunch break, which I was right about. So as we walked through the house, we knew that we wouldn't see him, but JJ still had fun walking around. When we were about to leave though, all of a sudden we ended up in a very short line right at the end of the house and as it turned out. . . Mickey had just come back from his lunch break! We ended up only having to wait about 5 minutes, which was perfect! When we met him, JJ just kept pointing at him and then looking at us and saying "mouse, mouse, I see mouse." It was really cute.

After walking around crowded and hot Disneyland for a few hours, we headed over to California Adventure which is never as crowded. We got to take a picture with Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater there, which caused one of the few fits that JJ threw during the day. He wanted to stay and play with the cars, not just take a picture and then keep walking. I kind of felt bad because he was sooo excited to see them, then we had to just get out of the way for the next family, which JJ didn't understand. We did a few rides there and eventually JJ fell asleep in his stroller, which gave me the opportunity to go on one of my favorite rides ever, Soaring Over California : ) Thanks to Brian for watching sleeping JJ while I went on the ride : )

When JJ woke up from his nap, Brian and I were enjoying nice cold "adult drinks" at a restaurant in Downtown Disney. We didn't notice that the restaurant was located directly in front of JJ's dream store, a "build it yourself" car store! It was just like Build-A-Bear, but with cars! JJ chose Sally (from Cars) and gave her some nice stock tires and fancy rims. He did not choose the $25 upgrade to make it a remote control car, well, we didn't choose that!

After the parks, we went back to our hotel and went in the pool and hot tub for a little while before dinner and bed. JJ loves being in the water now and had a great time playing around in the hot tub, even though the whole time he was in there he kept saying "too hot, too hot, too hot" (the temperature was about that of a nice warm bath). When we would ask him if he wanted to get out though, he would say no.

After a great and long day, we had dinner and went to sleep. More about day two to follow. . .