PTR: Another Family Trip, Another Birthday to Celebrate. Oct 11-16, 2017!

momtohms

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Hello again! I haven't posted much over the last couple of years between our first family trip and this upcoming one! My husband and I were able to visit Disneyland last summer for a long weekend in July as an early Anniversary celebration (sans kiddos!) but I didn't do a trip report for that. We had a great time though, rode tons of rides, ate lots of great food, I got horribly sunburnt...:scared::goodvibes Totally worth it though, it was fun to experience Disney without constantly keeping track of our girls!

Our first family trip was back in May of 2015 - just after the start of the 60th anniversary celebrations! The link to the TR for that is in my signature if you would like to check it out :) We celebrated my oldest and youngest's 6th and 3rd birthday (they share a birthday), so it was a given that our next trip fall around our middle daughter's birthday.

More trip details coming soon...first, updated introductions!

I'm C, and my husband is A. We've been married for a little over 9 years! We live in Anchorage, AK but are both from the Seattle, WA area! He works in the aviation industry and serves in the military reserves. I'm a stay at home mom. He's a fan of listening to music (especially records), loves cars, loves technology, and tolerates my Disney obsession quite well ;-) I love reading, photography, nail polish, and all things Disney and Harry Potter.

Our oldest daughter is H, she turned 8 this past May and just started 3rd grade! She's a natural leader and very compassionate and caring. She loves pineapples (both as a print/pattern and to eat), animals - especially giraffes, drawing, creating things with perler beads, and playing Minecraft and board games with her sisters. Her favorite princesses are Rapunzel, Belle, and Elsa. Her favorite colors are orange, purple and yellow. She's most looking forward to riding Splash Mountain and the Matterhorn again, plus Peter Pan (since it was closed last time we went) and eating a Dole Whip. Because Pineapple. Naturally!

Our middle daughter is M, she'll be turning 7 on our trip and is in 1st grade this year! She is our more quiet and calm child who loves learning, and can often be found making up stories with her dolls. She loves all things pink and princesses. As well as flamingoes, butterflies, and wearing skirts and dresses (the only jeans she wears are ones with hearts printed all over them). Her favorite princesses are Aurora, Ariel, and Snow White. She loves Pink. Her favorite ride last time was Haunted Mansion and she can't wait to ride again and see it with the NBC overlay.

Our youngest daughter, S, is 5 and in Kindergarten. She's our little spitfire with energy for days, endless determination (and she's stubborn, oh so stubborn, lol) and has a sense of adventure and comedic timing that gives me Facebook status updates all year long ;-) She's a big fan of Unicorns. She loves being in the water and would take 5 baths a day if we let her, and she enjoys doing whatever her older sisters are doing. Her favorite princesses are Belle, Cinderella, and Tiana. She loves the color aqua blue. She's most looking forward to riding all of the big rides that she wasn't tall enough for last time. For our last trip she was only 36", this time she'll just be at the 42" mark so bring on the mountains and the river ;-)

I'll get into more details about our trip in my next post, but here's a recent pic of the girls from our trip to Seattle last month! It's rare that I get them all to pose together these days, but got this during a trip to the beach - loving their crazy wind blown hair!
L-R: youngest to oldest :love:

disboardsptr1.jpg

Looking forward to sharing our memories with you all!!!
 
On to the details!

As mentioned above, the main reason for this trip is to celebrate our MDD's 7th birthday. :cheer2: For our first family trip, we kept the entire thing a surprise from the girls - they had no idea we were even going on a vacation until we pulled up to the airport and then we had them convinced we were going to Seattle to visit their grandparents. It wasn't until we got to the hotel and broke the news that they discovered where we truly were. There's more details of that surprise and a video in the 2015 TR. This time, they all know, and have been eagerly counting down the days, which has been fun in its own way.

We are staying at the Disneyland Hotel this time around. Last time we stayed at the Paradise Pier, which was our plan for this trip, but when I called back in January - they were already out of rooms. I don't believe the entire hotel was booked at that point, but we use the military discount and I suspect they have a set amount of rooms blocked off at the military rate. When they said they had one more room at the DLH for our dates, I jumped on it. We loved walking around the grounds on our previous trips, so its a dream to get to stay there!

Our trip dates are October 11th through 16th. We fly down on the 11th, and will get to the hotel around dinner time. No big plans for that first day, we'll probably grab dinner somewhere and if there's time and energy, get in a swim before bed.

The 12th is a Disney day, and then on the 13th we are heading to Universal (mostly for Harry Potter and Despicable Me stuff!); the 14th, 15th, and 16th are Disney days as well. We leave very late on the 16th, so we should be able to enjoy the parks until a little after dinner time. We have reservations for Breakfast with Minnie at the Plaza the morning of MDD's birthday too. Originally we'd planned on doing the Halloween party on the 13th, but it sold out so much faster than I anticipated :( It all worked out though because this gives us another full Disney day and I imagine the party will be crazy crowded (and my kiddos would probably want to spend most of it in line for candy :rotfl:)

I think that is about it for now! I'm off to comment on the TRs that I stayed up far too late last night reading. They're getting me so excited for our trip!!
 
Your trip sounds super fun! And your daughters are beautiful! I love reading other trip reports from people with several little kids, since identify well with them! :-) We have taken our crew twice, once in 2013 (with "just" 3 kids) and then last November with 5 in tow! I am going without kids (my husband is a Saint) when I visit two of my college roommates that live in Anaheim. We're going October 23rd, and I'm so excited! I'm off to read your last trip report. :)
 
Your trip sounds super fun! And your daughters are beautiful! I love reading other trip reports from people with several little kids, since identify well with them! :-) We have taken our crew twice, once in 2013 (with "just" 3 kids) and then last November with 5 in tow! I am going without kids (my husband is a Saint) when I visit two of my college roommates that live in Anaheim. We're going October 23rd, and I'm so excited! I'm off to read your last trip report. :)

Thank you! I am the same way so I will definitely have to check out your trip reports as well :) Its always fun to read about how other families with littles did things when they went.

Your upcoming trip with your friends sounds so fun! I went with just my husband last summer, but hope to make a solo trip sometime too. It's such a different experience with kids vs without - both fun though!
 


Well, I didn't really end up making much out of this PTR. Whoops. Such is life!

The good news? We leave today! It's been a busy week of running errands and packing, but we are all ready to go.

Here's to safe travels, and a fun trip! Keeping those effected by the fires in our thoughts and prayers, thankfully the one closer to Anaheim sounds like it is getting under control a bit, maybe? But still scary for those in its path. The pictures out of northern CA are just horrible too :(

I'll update here when we return and link up my TR once I get that going! ODD got a few assignments to do from her teacher and one is to journal each day so I told her we could do that each night together since I would be writing up notes about the trip too. Maybe I'll include some of her journals in my TR too ;-)

Off to get a little sleep!
 

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