I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! At least, if you are in the USA. If not, I hope you had a great Wednesday.
Somehow, both DH and I were off so the three of us got to spend the day together! It was great, because time like that is so hard to come by...I work every other weekend, and most of the time on my weekends off we have something to do, so we never have time to just hang out around the house.
Our Independence Day celebrating actually began Tuesday night when we went to the nearby residential development's party. I really had wanted to go for the fireworks, but Paxton wasn't having it so we left early. Aside from getting some food and walking around, all we did was wait in line for 20 minutes for the pony rides. Paxton was a little antsy in line, but nothing a little bit of bubble magic couldn't fix!
They had other stuff going on like face painting, hot air balloon rides, and live music. But eventually it just got really crowded and Paxton was getting cranky and there was still more than an hour until the fireworks started, so we decided to leave early. There were still people pouring in when we left! I think it will probably be more fun next year when he's a little older and we can come better prepared.
Yesterday we started off with a little pool time in the backyard! Paxton absolutely loves his little baby pool, but his favorite part is filling it up with water from the hose!
We put on Mouse World Radio 5 which was playing patriotic music all day long while we played in the pool. For lunch, DH fired up the grill and we had some hot dogs. Not my favorite food, but I'll eat them on occasions like this where it's appropriate holiday food! lol And last night we watched
Fast Five which was actually really good. Paxton was even snuggling up in DH's lap for some of the car racing action scenes.
Now on the anniversary trip front, we have finally decided what to do! We actually make 5 years at the end of September but with our WDW trip just a month later, we decided it would be easier to celebrate a little early, so we started looking at the weekend of 24th-27th and maybe doing a weekend in New Orleans again like we did last year. But then I started thinking...you know we have these Premier AP's and we might not have any kind of AP again ever, at least night for a long time. Maybe we should go to WDW? I started looking at resort prices (we don't have enough Wyndham points to stay anywhere) and we were thinking a fun weekend in WDW just the two of us staying onsite, using Magical Express, etc. sounded great! I even was able to score a lunch ADR for Le Cellier that I was excited to try.
But then, DH started doing some research of his own...turns out we could go back to
Disneyland for just a couple hundred dollars more, AND despite the fact that it is a much longer plane ride, we would actually have MORE time in the parks than if we did WDW. After a few days going back and forth, last night we booked the California trip!!
Our flight there is similar to the one we took in May, getting us there at about 9:30 am. We are getting a rental car, probably doing Name Your Own Price on Priceline again. We are staying in a King Bedroom Suite at the
Peacock Suites...
It has free breakfast & wireless internet, and only charges $10/day for parking, which ended up being the best deal of all the places we looked.
When we arrive on Friday, we'll spend a big chunk of the day sightseeing in Los Angeles, something we wanted to do in May but didn't have the time for. Then we will probably go to a park that evening. We will have all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and most of the day Monday in the parks before our flight leaves at 6:45 pm. Even though it's the same amount of days that we would have spent at WDW, we will actually be able to maximize our time by being able to drive to the parks and by not having to use any mode of transportation besides our feet to park hop between parks! The only less than ideal part is that with the time change, we will be arriving at the airport in New Orleans at 12:30 am. This presents a challenge because my parents will have Paxton, and we'd love to go there to get a few hours of sleep before heading home in the morning. Unfortunately, their multitude of dogs will keep us from slipping into their house undetected in the middle of the night, and I'm positive their barking will wake Paxton up. So we are looking to find a cheap hotel near the airport that will let us check-in at 1 am.
I'm really excited we chose this for a number of reasons!
1. We didn't think we'd be back to DL for a long time, and after this, we probably won't be so we get one more chance to experience it!
2. We will be able to see Cars Land!
3. We might get to see the fireworks we missed in May, and we should definitely get to see The Magic, the Memories & You which we also missed, and get to see World of Color again...probably a few times!
4. We will be turning around to go to WDW just a couple of months later.
5. We have experience WDW a few time on adults-only trips pre-Paxton, but this will be our first and maybe only time to enjoy DL adults-only.
6. Having just been there, we don't feel like we need to do everything, so we can do a lot of things we wanted to do last time but couldn't...spending time in Los Angeles sightseeing, spend more time at Downtown Disney, and explore the resorts.
7. Did I mention Cars Land and World of Color?!
I am really excited about this, and feel so blessed to be able to experience DL again. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would be vising Disney Parks 4 times in the span of 12 months and that 2 of those times would be to DL/DCA! After this whirlwind of a Disney year, maybe it's a good thing we won't be back until October 2013.
I'm going to try to upload some pictures to another server today and replace them, but if nothing else, they will be back up on the 5th when my new month starts at photobucket and my bandwith resets.
it's a rare thing here too to be able to spend holidays together 
x 
