Simply Radiant: disneyland

I'm kind of overwhelmed with more than two weeks of travel to post about so I'll try to keep at it a day or two at a time (and hopefully I won't bore you to tears). Even though our budget isn't huge right now, we figured this might be the only time when our kids are young that Larry might have such a flexible schedule so we decided to go all out while we could, and we blocked out over two weeks of September to travel. Larry didn't take a vacation last year since he was saving time off for Ollie's arrival and job interviews, so we were all really looking forward to a break. We started off our trip by driving to Anaheim to spend a few days at Disneyland. Larry grew up in Orange County and LOVES Disneyland. He's been hinting for months that he really wanted to go to Disneyland so I'm not sure if our days at Disneyland were more for Creed or for Larry.

When I bought our tickets online, the total price difference for our family to go to Disneyland and California Adventure for two days verses five days was $50. I really only wanted to go for two days, longer than that seemed exhausting to me, but we bought five day tickets knowing we could go for two days, then go again at the end of our trip if we felt up to it. It turned out to be a great decision, we never felt rushed and got to see parts of the parks we'd never taken the time to see before.

Creed was making grumpy faces in a few of these photos, but he had the time of his life! The lines were short, the weather was great, and he was much more excited about the rides this year. Last year he shed a lot of tears, but this year and got off most rides and asked if he could go right back on.

He still LOVES Mickey and insisted on going to visit him at his house. That was the only line he was really inpatient to get through because he REALLY wanted to give Mickey a hug. Wish granted!

I love watching him exploding with joy. This is his face during the Pixar parade

Which is a really great parade full of floats like this (don't waste your time at the Celebration Parade at Disneyland).

Ollie loved the park more than you'd think a six-month old would

It was great to realize how much Creed grew this year. Last year, he balked at the idea of going on the bumper cars in Bugsland (and I don't think he was tall enough anyway), this year I can't even count how many times he went on it, but he would not even consider being the one to drive, he just liked to point out a car for you to chase and try to crash into.

Creed helped me take this picture of Larry and Ollie on the Winnie the Pooh ride. Have you been on it? It's crazy, but it was Creed's favorite ride.

Creed was even all smiles waiting in line to get back on the Winnie the Pooh ride.

A lot of my pictures on Ollie on the trip look like this. We wore that guy out and he was great about sleeping on the go.

The best part of our time at Disneyland was obviously just watching the boys so full of wonder and awe and joy. Here's Creed exploring Belle's library (which I didn't even know existed)

And we had a chance to meet some of the villains you only see around during Halloween season (Creed really wanted a picture of Cruella deVille, but he did not want to go near her).

And World of Color was everything that it promised to be (but if you go, you have to have a Fast Pass to see it so head to California Adventure as soon as it open to grab a pass)