Redlands Temple

While down in California I took the opportunity to go to the Redlands Temple with some of my family.  I really loved the time we were able to spend at the Temple!

Disneyland!

At the end of July we got to once again climb aboard Uncle Deans RV and head down to California! We were all so excited and ready for this annual getaway and I was beyond ready to be able to be with my family again. Being away from family is the pits I tell you, luckily I am able to go down at least twice a year so that is better then the pioneers who had to live apart from family. :)

So Kefford and I planned that we were going to take the kids to Disneyland for a day while we were down there. We tried to keep it a secret but apparently they all knew except for Rylee. The other three kept it a secret from me that they knew until we got there so I guess a secret was kept after all. But Rylee didn't know and it was really fun to watch her make the connection!

Heather, Mom, Erin, Ashleigh, Joshua and Mallory all came with us and that made the day even funner. I was really bummed and bothered when we came home to realize that I never got a group shot of all of us. Darn it! Where was my mind? Oh well, next time for sure that will happen! So we got there right around the opening and even though it was the middle of summer we were able to go on all the rides we wanted to in the morning and not have hardly any wait at all. The longest we had to wait for a ride in the morning was about 20 minutes, not bad at all. We were able to go on the newly renovated Star Tours ride and that one proved to be a lot of fun. It has the Star Wars characters in it and our mission was to protect the Jedi Spy who was hidden among us from the Dark side. Guess who the Jedi Spy turned out to be? None other then our little Avynlea! It was so fun to see her cute face pop up on the screen. She was embarrassed about it but only because she was not smiling in the picture. We all loved it and teased her about being the Jedi Spy for the rest of the day.

Kefford took this picture of random people on the Space Mountain ride.

On some of the rides a picture is taken at some point and we all got a laugh at the expressions on our kids faces. We wish that we would have bought some of the pictures because they are too funny but at least we have record on our cameras.

Because Avynlea, Ryker and Rylee were in the front of the Log on the Splash Mountain ride they got pretty wet. I think they were ok with it! :)

Kenedy has a thing for Johnny Depp even though he is old enough to be her Dad and really enjoyed seeing him on the wall as Jack Sparrow on the Pirates of the Carribean ride.

After a bunch of rides we split up because the girls wanted to go see the Princesses and nobody else had the desire. So I took the girls and Kefford took Ryker to look at Souvenirs.  

At this point Kefford and Ryker caught back up with us and Ryker was non too pleased to see that the girls were waiting for a turn with Belle. He got pretty grumpy at this point because he wanted his Souvenir NOW and did not want to have to wait till the end of the day like we suggested. What a little pill. Kefford finally took him to get his sword and then he was happy.

Towards the end of the day Mom and Erin went home and Heather, Ashleigh and I went to save a spot by the water so that we could watch Fantasmic, my favorite show to see at Disneyland, it brings back so many memories and happy thoughts. I never miss it while we are here and I am making sure my kids are loving it just as much as I do. While we waited Kefford took the other kids on some more rides.

They did The Finding Nemo ride, which they all loved.

They did the Flying Dumbo ride.

They did the Teacups.

And they went through Tarzans Treehouse.

When the time came we all settled in to watch Fantasmic and it was every bit as magical as I remembered! I really love that show. After that was done we got to watch the fireworks and then very slowly we made our way to ride Indiana Jones one last time, minus Avynlea and Heather who didn't want to and then we exited the Magic Kingdom. We had a really great time and I love that Kefford and I have the opportunity to do fun things like this with our kids. We are thinking we want to do this again in a couple of years but do a three day pass and do Disneyland and California Adventure. That would be fun!

I was playing around with my MacBook and put our Disney pictures in a slideshow and set it to music. I have them playing to a generic song because I did not have my iTunes set up on this computer yet. Now I do and I do not know how to change the music, oh well. I added the slideshow below so if you want to see the pictures again with music then go for it. Not all of the pictures made the cut because Kefford did not give me the pictures from his iPhone until after it was all done.