Sea World!

So judging by the lack of comments, everyone has seen enough Disneyland pictures. Well, I'm done posting them anyway. :) But we still did even MORE fun stuff on our California trip, and one of those things was our day at Sea World, San Diego! (Can you believe we've been home a whole month and I'm still blogging about our trip? Too many pictures, too little time!)

We did lots of fun things at Sea World. . . We saw cute penguins. . .

We saw sleeping polar bears. . .

And one very awake polar bear named Stephen!

Of course the best thing about Sea World is the shows! The dolphins were so adorable in the dolphin show.

We found a big sandbox in the kid's play area, and Kirsten loved playing in the sand. It was one of the only areas not crowded with a ton of kids.

We also got completely soaked on the Shipwreck Rapids ride! Well, me and Stacy and Oscar did. Stephen opted out of the ride and instead decided to shoot us with the water guns they provide from the dry area. By the end of the ride I felt like I had gone swimming WITH the dolphins, I was that wet!

We saw a really cute pet show! I don't know what it has to do with the ocean (nothing!), but they had a bunch of dogs and even cats doing awesome tricks. It was really entertaining!

The sea lion show was really cheesy and funny, like always.

We ended the day with the BEST show, of course the Shamu show! Kirsten liked watching it with Grandma.

The killer whales are so breathtaking. When I was little and even when I was a teenager I had a dream of becoming a killer whale trainer at Sea World. I still am envious of those trainers and think it must be one of the most amazing jobs in the world!

Kirsten At Toon Town!

For everyone who is crazy enough to take a toddler with them to Disneyland (obviously this includes me!), you MUST go to Toon Town. I think it was Kirsten's favorite area in the whole park, and she had a blast running around and trying to explore everything. There are an abundance of cute cartoon cars to take pictures in too!

Here's our family aboard Donald Duck's ship!

Trapped behind bars!

When Kirsten was still a crawling baby, I used to imagine her walking along next to me, content to hold my hand and just look at everything around her. That imaginary scene is so far from the truth! She wrenches her hand away from us within half a second and then wants to choose her OWN direction to walk in. It usually results in her running haphazardly around in circles, never walking along with us nicely. Sigh. I hope this sounds familiar to other people too!
Here she is, the kamikaze walker. :)

In front of Minnie Mouse's house! How adorable is that?

Kirsten loved playing inside Minnie's kitchen, especially with the light-up dishwasher! Unfortunately none of the characters were in their houses while we were there, because they were all at a parade. But at least it wasn't crowded!

Where can I find a mailbox like that for MY house?

Toon Town was a totally great place for Kirsten to get all her energy out before she got back in the stroller, and I love all the great photos we got there!

Too Many Awesome Things About Disneyland!

Awesome thing #1: The huge balloons! I know this was one of Kirsten's favorite things. She really did enjoy being in her stroller, looking at all the people and lights and fun thins to see. We bought her this massive Minnie Mouse balloon and she LOVED it! It's the biggest balloon ever! Awesome thing #2: The mouse ears! She actually liked wearing them too! She pulled them off every once in awhile of course, but then she wanted us to put them back on her. Cute!
Awesome thing #3: Parades! We didn't see the entire Pixar Play parade, but it really was fun and Kirsten enjoyed her view from the shoulders of her 6'5" grandpa. :)
Awesome thing #4: The feeling you immediately get when you walk into Disneyland. You just have to be right inside the front entrance to feel that giddy, happy feeling! I love it!
Awesome thing #5: The fun Beach Boys music they play inside California Adventure. And of course the Golden Gate bridge reproduction!
Awesome thing #6: All the letters of California are outside the entrance to California Adventure, and I can sit inside the A.
Awesome thing #7: Seeing the BEST fireworks show ever created from right outside the Sleeping Beauty Castle.
Awesome thing #8: Being there with my family and friends!
Awesome thing #9: Disneyland looks SO magical lit up at night! Look at poor little tired Kirsten in her stroller. She just wanted to go to bed by that point!
There are too many more awesome things to name! I hope you all enjoy the pictures!

The Rides!!!

Disneyland is the happiest place on earth ALL year long in my opinion, but it especially was in the second week of September! We started out there on a Monday, and the two parks had SO few people at them! We didn't even need to use many Fast-passes because we walked right onto almost all the rides! Need proof? Here you go:Seriously, signs like that were very common! A lot of them actually said 5 minutes was the wait time, but we still walked right on! It was amazing! The only two rides that were closed while we were there were Small World and the Haunted Mansion. The weather was also great. It was warm enough to go on the water rides and feel refreshed, but not too hot. LOVED it!

I've been going on Disneyland rides for my entire life, and I adore them. I'm not nearly as familiar with the rides at California Adventure, but they were fun!
Here's my guide to the rides: (oh yeah, get excited!)

Ashley's Favorite Rides-
Splash Mountain
Indiana Jones Adventure
Pirates of the Caribbean

Ashley's Least Favorite Rides-
The Teacups (yep, it's the only one I dislike)

The Scariest Ride At Disneyland-
Snow White's Scary Adventures (yes, it's a kid's ride, and YES they call it scary for a reason! When the evil witch came out of the wall right towards my face it startled me so badly that I grabbed onto my friend Stacy's arm and screamed my head off! It was really funny to everyone else, but it freaked me out!!!)

Rides I Rode For the First Time On This Trip-
-Nemo's Submarine Voyage- this one did have a line, but it was worth it because it was a long ride and really cute! I liked it.
-Monster's Inc. at California Adventure- Cute ride, worth riding once.
-Grizzly River Rapids at California Adventure- Totally awesome rapids ride, and got me totally soaked!
-Toy Story Arcade at California Adventure- this one's new, and similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disneyland except it's a LOT more fun! I rode this one a whole bunch of times and kept improving my score. Best-kept secret: Get in the single-rider line! You practically walk right on and bypass the entire line!

Rides I Couldn't Ride Because I'm Pregnant-
Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Matterhorn, California Screamin' Coaster, Tower of Terror, Indiana Jones (bummer!)
Those are all fun rides, but really the list of things you can go on while pregnant is so much longer!

Things To Do While Everyone Else Rides Those Rides-
-Eat
-Shop
-People-watch
-Take pictures of things you might not normally see, like this one:

For a much different point of view, here is Kirsten's Guide to the Rides, or Rides From the Perspective of a 15 month-old:

Kirsten's Least Favorites Rides-
Almost all of them. :) I'm sure it's different for every kid, but she really didn't like many of the rides. I thought she would love Dumbo (what kid doesn't?) but she got really scared and cried most of the time. She just hated the wind blowing so fast in her face.

She also cried through Peter Pan (my favorite kid ride!), so I knew the rest of the Fantasy Land rides would be disasters. She tolerated the Winnie the Pooh ride okay, but at that point I figured we'd just stop trying the rides for now.

Kirsten's Favorite Rides (otherwise known as the Only Rides She Liked):
-Heimlich's slow-moving little Bug's Life ride in California Adventure. It was really cute and moved so slowly she couldn't help but like it! The whole Bug's Life land was adorable and meant for really young kids.

-The Spinning Ladybug ride in the Bug's Life land. It was like a slower, smaller version of the teacups, and she did okay on it.

-The Jungle Cruise! We finally found a whole-family ride that she enjoyed! It moved so slowly and she liked seeing all the "animals" off the sides of the boat. I'm sure she would have liked Small World as well, but it was closed.

My parents emailed me this picture of them from Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. I thought it was pretty funny, and I'm sure anyone who knows my parents will enjoy this too!

The Disneyland rides are so awesome! Hopefully Kirsten will think so too the next time we take her there. We had such a great time on them!

Disneyland Characters!!!

My Disneyland pictures will take up several different posts, so this is most definitely not all! But these are all the cute pictures we got with the Disney characters. This was pretty much the main reason I wanted to take Kirsten to Disneyland with us at such a young age. . . to get fun pictures like these!
I love these pictures we got with Winnie the Pooh! Kirsten wasn't scared of any of the characters at all, which surprised me! She just wanted to touch all of them and thought they were fascinating.

We also found Eeyore for a picture!

I really wanted to get a picture of Kirsten with Tigger, but Kirsten was with my parents and not with us when Tigger showed up. We were WET in this picture because we had just gotten off Splash Mountain! I LOVE that ride!

My parents did manage to find Minnie and Mickey though! I'm so glad!!!

She just loved their big noses. :)

This last one is in California Adventure.

Stay tuned for lots more pictures and info about our Disneyland trip. It was SO awesome! And I'm really happy we got such cute pictures with the characters!

5 Fall Things I'm Loving This Week!

1. Halloween Oreos! I look forward to these babies every year! For some reason I had a really difficult time finding them this year so I was thrilled to finally find them at Target. Even though they say they taste the same as regular Oreos, they're somehow better. I don't know why, but they are!
2. The cold, crisp air outside! All you have to do is step outside, breathe in, and you instantly know it's FALL! I love this time of year so much!

3. Halloween Kit-Kats! Another treat I look forward to every year! They're white chocolate ones dyed orange and I just think they are so yummy I've been eating at least two every day. It's dangerous to keep these things in a bowl on your end table, let me tell you!

4. My new favorite Halloween decoration that I bought at Disneyland. . . isn't it the cutest thing ever? I fell in love the second I saw it! There's a cool little flicker light that goes inside it too, but I still need to buy batteries for it. There's just nothing cuter than a Mickey-shaped pumpkin!

5. The scent of the pumpkin spice candles I've been burning in the house at night. They get me right into the FALL mood in two seconds! I don't even like pumpkin pie or eating pumpkin things in particular, but I sure love the smell!

Crazy Dreams!!!

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that I had a baby boy. I woke up and thought, "Well, at least I actually had a HUMAN baby this time!" When I was pregnant with Kirsten, I had a very vivid dream one night that instead of a baby I had a litter of kittens! And the weirdest thing about it was that nobody else in the dream thought it was weird!

I typically remember lots of my dreams and I have all KINDS of crazy ones about people I haven't thought about in years or people I've never even met before. My dreams get even stranger when I'm pregnant though! For some reason, lots of my pregnancy dreams involve swimming in the water with whales or fish or just being in the water somehow. Any dream interpreters reading this? :)