a very goofy brunch

the next morning, everyone woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to do a little pre-brunch shopping in downtown disney.  the moms wanted to pick up some souvenirs for the little sisters at home, and so once everyone was all packed up and the bags taken down to the bell desk for storage we said goodbye to our fun disneyland hotel suite and headed on out of there.

the 50th anniversary celebration for the haunted mansion is well represented with these fun decorations in the elevators and a huge photo op along one wall near the lobby.

sisters.

in the disney dress shop we found a display of the $600 heidi klum-designed ears.  yes, that's right - SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.  yowza.

after everyone had their purchases in hand, it was time to head back to the hotel to meet up with the guys for brunch at goofy's kitchen.

of course, we had to take this:

inside, the hub and the special friend had already checked us in and ushered us towards the photo op with goofy.

we were shown to our table, which happened to be in a quiet little corner that was pretty close to the grub.  once we'd picked out our seats, we headed over to the buffet to check it all out.  this was the first thing that caught my eye:

um, yes please.  and we all know i eat like a toddler with no supervision, so this was my first plate:

as everyone else trickled back to the table to start eating, we were greeted by an old friend.

this is my most favorite picture of that entire morning:

after i'd wolfed down that plate of deliciousness, i headed back to the buffet and eyed the dessert bar.  here, you can see too:

pluto was the bean's favorite character when she was little.  i don't know if she remembers that, but she seemed pretty excited to see him when he came to visit our table.

i never remember which one is chip and which one is dale.  either way, one of them came over to say hello.

it was a fun, loud, delicious brunch and a lovely way to wrap up what had been a pretty phenomenal celebration of the bean's 12th birthday.  we parted ways as we waited for the valet to bring the cars up, and half an hour later we were home.

thanks for another wonderful weekend, disneyland!  see ya real soon!

a most magical day

our original plan was to head down to disneyland relatively early on saturday so that we could drop off our bags at the hotel, do the pre-check-in and then play at the parks all day.  and we did all of that...just with a little later start than we'd originally hoped for.  isn't that always the case with most everything though?  but no biggie...we finally got it together and in no time were pulling up to the hotel and heading inside.

there was quite a lengthy line to check in, so the hub shooed us away to take the girls to the parks while he and the special friend took care of the boring admin stuff.  the bean decided she wanted to go into california adventure first, so that's what we did.  and after securing our first fastpass using the disneyland app, we headed over to the animation academy to do some drawing.

it was lunchtime by the time we emerged from there with our goofy drawings in hand, and so we headed over to the smokejumpers grill to get some grub.  this is where you can find the frozen jack & coke machine, and the old lady was happy to be our guinea pig.

this is also where you can pick up a s'mores dessert that (i think) is only available here.  it was really tasty - chocolate-dipped graham crackers with a layer of brownie and torched marshmallow in between.

our first ride of the day was the incredicoaster.  one of the bean's friends wasn't really feeling up to it, and so i stayed behind to hang out with her so that her mom could get on the ride.  after all, i can pretty much ride it whenever i want (and in fact, had just ridden it last weekend).  they all seemed to have a great time:

our next fastpass wasn't available yet, and so we walked the girls through the candy shop and then over to the silly symphony swings.

afterwards, we walked over to the waterfront to take a few group pics.  first, the girls:

then the hub volunteered to take one of the whole group:

i wanted a family photo, first with just the four of us:

and then we added the special friend into the mix.

next, we decided to take a moms' picture - and of course a couple of selfies came first.

and then it seemed that everyone wanted to photobomb us:

 and then we were finally able to get our shot.

while the hub went off to stand in the long line to grab some micheladas for one of the moms and the old lady, we sent the kids off to the jumping jellyfish ride.  while we waited for them, i caught a glimpse of a plaid-wearing cast member walking towards us with a small family.  the old lady had seen online that ashton kutcher, mila kunis and their kids were in the park that day, and sure enough...

micheladas!

our last ride on the california adventure side was soarin' over the world, which not everyone had been on before.  it was fun to watch and hear them react to the ride, which has always been one of my favorite attractions in that park.  and then we decided to head across the way into disneyland.  we made our way through the crowds into galaxy's edge, where everyone marveled at the details of the new land before getting in line for the millennium falcon: smuggler's run ride.  the standby line was quoted at 70 minutes, which sounds a little crazy but the rest of the park was pretty crowded and we'd have been waiting around that same amount of time for almost every other ride anyway.  the line was so long that we were ushered into a holding area i'd never even seen before:

but because the line kept moving and we weren't stuck in any one spot for too long, it seemed to go by pretty quickly.  it was somewhere around 60 minutes before we finally found ourselves boarding the ride, so the wait was actually a little less than we'd anticipated.  we walked around galaxy's edge, going into a few shops and giving the girls their first taste of blue and green milk before making our way out and running into chewbacca along the way.

we snagged a quick castle picture of the girls before it started to drizzle on us.

and the hub caught this of me as we made our way down main street and back to downtown disney to check in for our dinner at naples.

we started off with a charcuterie board for the table, plus some caprese salad.

this was the hub's pork chop:

and my porcini and asparagus pizza.

it was around 9:00 by then, and we decided to head over to the hotel to see our rooms and have our bags brought up from the bell desk before it got too late.

is it wrong to love a hotel just for the magical headboard?  because i do.  this is what we dubbed "the adult space."

the girls shared the room connected to us, where there was a small bedroom with a queen sized bed that the bean and one of her friends claimed immediately:

this is a blurry shot of the bed that pulled out of the wall:

in the bathroom there were the usual disney/mickey touches.

after everyone's bags had been delivered and we'd gotten somewhat settled, we headed back out to fulfill one more of the birthday girl's wishes.  she'd managed to hit the 20,000 steps goal for the day:

and so that got her a crazy shake from black tap that she shared with her friends (the four of them shared two gigantic shakes).

and this was the fruity pebbles shake that the old lady and i split.

our last stop was the jazz kitchen for some beignets, and by the time everyone was done with their treats we caught a glimpse of the fireworks show from behind the trees.  we'd thought for sure that it would be cancelled that evening due to the weather and so hadn't made any real effort to secure seats with a decent view.  oh well.

everyone was pretty tired by then, and so we all trudged back over to the hotel and got back into our room.  pajamas came out, teeth were brushed, a few showers were taken and that was that.  just before midnight, all the lights were out and everyone was fast asleep.

day 1 of the disneyland extravaganza, check!