lots and lots of disney fun

so as you can imagine, we've been to disneyland a good number of times in - oh, say the last four months or so.  and while each visit is always a ton of fun and probably deserves its own post, i figure it's probably best to try and whittle them down into one to keep from becoming too repetitive.  like, here's a few shots from the day after my birthday (because of course you know i had to get my birthday button!):

this was one of our summertime visits, when the bean finally got one of her beloved cream cheese pretzels, we discovered the most delicious cold brew coffee, only served in galaxy's edge and a visit to toontown to see the construction walls up as they work on building the new mickey & minnie ride:

this is from our first visit using our magic keys - which is what disneyland is calling annual passes now.  don't be fooled - there's pretty much zero difference between the two programs aside from the fact that we have to make reservations for every visit.  it kinda sucks, but at the same time it does make it more manageable once inside the parks.

we managed to score tickets to the annual halloween party for the night before halloween.  we hadn't been to one of those in awhile, and we had a great time and took home a giant backpack full of candy from the treat trails.  this was also the first time we got to ride the new spider-man themed ride, webslingers.  it's super fun, by the way.  definitely give it a shot if you visit.

one of the bean's days off from school happened to land on the very day that all of the holiday festivities at the 'land began.  it was a fun way to kick off the season, and it also happened to be disney+ day, so there were some giveaways in the morning (which we missed, d-oh) and photo ops and stuff throughout the resort.

these shots are from one of our quickie visits where we just went to soak in some disney magic, eat a churro and browse through the shops.  

a couple of days before christmas, we met up with cousin seven and her fiancé for a super rainy disney day.  when you're armed with an umbrella, a raincoat and rain boots, it really doesn't matter how much it rains...it's still a fun day at disneyland.

our final visit for 2021 was on new year's eve eve.  we took our time getting there, rolling in at around 6pm after the last of the rain had fallen and scoring a sweet parking spot in the toy story lot.  that's the only one as of right now that has a bus to take you from the lot to the entrance to the resort, and it sure beats the long walk to and from the parking structure.  supposedly the trams are going to return sometime this year, which will be nice.  maybe everyone will go back to parking there while we just keep on keepin' on at toy story.  and for this visit our goals were to have dinner (which we did, at plaza inn), use up our last "festival of holidays" food & drink tabs and see the fireworks.  mission accomplished!

would i recommend buying a magic key at this point?  i'm not really sure.  we really miss being spontaneous and dropping in on the parks whenever the urge hits - although everyone tells me that they've had good luck scoring reservations by looking the night before they want to go.  we haven't really tried that yet especially because the last couple of months have been so busy for us, so maybe we'll give it a shot soon.  in any case, it's been really nice getting to visit our favorite place as often as we have, and i'm looking forward to more disney fun in 2022.  omicron be damned.

it's their world, we just live in it

this is literally a doggie photo dump.  because we're constantly taking pictures of all three dogs, and so most likely there's only five of us who would actually appreciate this particular post, but that's okay.  we love our stevie, cocoa and teddy and they deserve a little time in the spotlight.  

and so here are a handful of my favorite pictures of all three of them from the last few months.  believe me...there are WAY more photos than this.  heh.  they're like children, for real.

come on, you went "awwwwww" at least once, didn't you??

bite-sized fair fun

with the 'rona still on the loose, the l.a. county fair was cancelled for the second year in a row.  the orange county fair had been held during the summer, but l.a. decided to go with a good news/bad news kinda announcement.  because along with the cancellation, they announced a new date for 2022 that would be the new date for the fair going forward - instead of being in september (when it's always, ALWAYS butt ass hot and miserable), it would be in may.  may can kind of be hit or miss when it comes to weather, but it's not typically anywhere near triple digits.  and so this came as welcome news because hopefully now it will be a really lovely time to experience the fair without having to walk around in a puddle of sweat.

there's a pretty visual for you, huh?

although they did throw us a bone of sorts, holding a "bite sized" version of the fair over several weekends in september.  it was significantly smaller, but still offered some of the bad-for-you fair foods, scary-as-hell erector set rides and a few vendors to shop from.  of course, we secured tickets and took an uber to check it out.

there were just a few rows of vendors offering stuff like home decor, fidget toys and pop-its, clothing and handbags and other similar wares.

of course, masks were required.  i didn't really see anyone enforcing it, but we mostly kept ours on anyway.

it was REALLY small.  like, comically so.  the rides were all spaced apart because of how few there were.

and there really weren't that many food vendors to pick from.  we still managed to find adult beverages and deep-fried stuff, though.

we looped around a couple of times to make sure we hadn't missed anything, but after maybe an hour we gave up and headed back to catch an uber home.

it may not have been super exciting, but it was still a fun evening out.  we spent time together, ate some familiar and delicious food and got some fresh air.  i'd call that a win.