Poncho People.

I learned something new on this particular trip to Disneyland: if there's rain in the SoCal weather forecast, you sure as heck better pack your rain boots because they mean business. As the song goes, it never rains in Southern California, but girl don't they warn 'ya, it pours, man it pours. True story. And yes that really is a song; proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pyC7WnvLT4

We had a blast!! It was so wonderful to have a girls' weekend! I hadn't been on a trip with Mom and Tara since... uh, well, I'm not sure actually. It's been ages though and that just seems weird. To only travel with Mom and sisters or Papa and Grammi your whole life and then all of the sudden you only travel alone or with your significant other. I think continuing the family trips is definitely a good idea.We were so cute walking through the airport. Actually, it was mostly Tara who was cute. Her suitcase was pathetically short so she looked kind of silly pulling it behind her, and then her giraffe, Autumn, sticking out of her backpack just made me giggle. I don't know why but for some reason I just found it really funny.

We arrived at the hotel very, very late -- word of advice, do not take the Super Shuttle from LAX. They drive laps around the airport until the van is full. We seriously rode around in the van for 45 minutes before actually leaving the airport. No bueno. It was midnight by the time we got up to our room and we pretty much went right to sleep. Mostly right to sleep anyway. We explored the room, flipped through the channels on the TV, found some souvenirs (coasters, pens, stickers off the soap wrappers etc.), then flopped onto the surprisingly comfy beds and tried to keep the excitement at bay so we could snooze for a while.

This was our first time staying at the Paradise Pier hotel. It is so wonderful to stay at the Disneyland Resort and have a nice short walk to and from the parks!! And everything is just so cute and Disney-y, so that's fun too. AND they serve Mickey Mouse waffles in the hotel restaurant, which is always a plus.

And we're off! Didn't get up nearly as early as we said we were going to though. It wasn't raining Friday morning so I wore a tank top, capris, and sandals. I didn't even unzip my sweatshirt all day long and by 2pm, I was ready for long pants and socks & shoes :) I made my best effort, what can I say?

Parducci/Sodoma girls self-portrait take 1.

(speaking of Sodoma, Mom made my reservation for the shuttle under the name Stephanie Sodoma. I called her out on it and we laughed and thought it was really funny. Then when we arrived at the hotel at midnight on Thursday night the man at the desk asked for the name of the third guest:
Mom: "Stephanie"
Man: "Last name?"
Mom: "Sodoma"
Steph: "No it isn't!!"
Mom: "No it isn't!! It's Lentz! Stephanie Lentz!"
It was really really funny and she told me not to tell Steven. I think I told him when he called about two minutes later.)

(speaking of the man behind the desk at the hotel -- his name was Steven. In fact, I was running into Steven's all weekend long!! I saw at least 5 cast members with Steven on their name tags and one Disneyland guest with Steven embroidered on his Micky ears hat. There were just Steven's everywhere except not for mine because he was at home and it made me kind of really sad.)

To all who come to this happy place, welcome.

I wish I knew more Walt quotes. This is definitely a personal favorite and I think it every time I walk down Mainstreet.

Evidently Tara was being a flamingo in that photo, which is fun. I like her style. We spent the morning on some of our favorite rides (Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, Pirates...) and then stopped at lunch time for the most amazing corn dog I have ever eaten. So worth the calories and the heavy grease-ball feeling I had in my stomach afterwards. Tara had a dance thing to be at in Toon Town at two, at which point I pretty much ran my cold little self back up to the room to change into warmer clothes. It wasn't raining or anything but it was only in the 50s and rather windy. Not exactly capris and sandals weather you know.

Just as we got up to the room I got a phone call from Chelsea saying that she had just walked into Disneyland. Blast! Terrible timing. We decided to meet up for happy hour at The House of Blues in Downtown Disney. We shared fries and I had a really lovely drink called a green gator. It had pineapple juice, malibu rum, and melon liquor. And then into the park for more rides and a churro of course :)

Always fun to be at Disneyland with a friend! And what a treat to see Chelsea -- it's not often I can call and say, "hey! Want to meet me at Disneyland?"

I'm not even going to comment on this.

Friday night we saw the World of Color show. I'm not even going to try to describe it to. I will say that it is not to be missed and I am so incredibly glad that we went on Friday night! Trying to go Saturday night in the wind and the rain would have been miserable. Tara and I ended Friday evening with at least two (maybe three) trips down Splash Mountain. Mom is such a great sport! She just kind of hangs out in the giftshop right there while we run back through the line. We were really lucky the line was so short and I told Tara it was the only chance we had to go on Splash because I knew that if I got wet it didn't matter since we were going right up to the room anyway. The first time down we didn't get wet at all. Should have ended there though because we got splashed pretty good the second time. Mom bought a couple of cookies and some really tasty English toffee for us to share. Tara fell asleep before she could eat any of it so we saved her a bit for breakfast.

Saturday morning we looked out the window and just saw a wall of sideways rain. Seriously. The palm trees were blowing around like crazy and it just looked miserable. We were still excited to go into the park but I'll be the first to admit we were probably all feeling a little hesitant at the same time. We started the day off right with chocolate milk and Mickey waffles and then Mom had a little surprise for us:

Ponchos.

I shuddered when I saw her holding them. I always think the people wearing ponchos at Disneyland are such wimps! I mean, come on, isn't it ridiculous that people buy ponchos to go down Splash Mountain? I think so. But, we weren't wearing them for water rides, we were wearing them because the weather was miserable and cold and there was no chance of us drying off and warming up while we walked around. So, we were poncho people. It was quite the adventure.

Tara had another dance thing to go to so Mom and I dropped her off, zipped over to Disneyland to pick up fastpasses for Space Mountain, and then popped back over to California Adventure to get in line for the totally awesome Toy Story ride. Yet another not-to-be-missed attraction that I had never experienced before.

Within the first 15 minutes of our day I was completely soaked from the knees down. Our shoes were just squishing all morning long. We didn't really talk too much Saturday morning. I think Mom and I were both just trying to talk ourselves into enjoying the Disneyland experience but we had to agree, it just wasn't the same in the rain. I hope this was both our first and last Disneyland in the rain experience.

We went on some rides and it was nice to get out of the rain for a minute but everything was wet wet wet, even inside. We were more than happy to take a break at the Pizza Port and share a hot chocolate and slice of BBQ chicken pizza for lunch.

You should see some of the pictures Mom took on that day. In one particularly pathetic photo, I am on the Dumbo ride with my chin tucked down to my chest and both my jacket hood and poncho hood covering as much of my head as possible. I've never thought of Dumbo as a fast ride but I kid you not, the rain was slapping me in the face as I was flying around up there. At one point I just started laughing. I couldn't believe how ridiculous the whole scenario was.

We met back up with Tara and decided it was the perfect time to go down the Grizzly River Run seeing as how we were already completely soaked anyway. It was so much fun!! I was really nervous about getting splashed because I thought I was going to freeze but the water on the ride was actually warm and it felt so good! That was one really nice thing about most of the rides -- usually at Disney parks I freeze every time I go into a ride because of the AC, this time it was actually nice and warm in the rides and just freezing outside.

Back up to the room to change (blast! The only dry things I had at this point were capris and sandals -- should have brought an extra pair of jeans. Fortunately it had pretty much stopped raining by this time in the afternoon so I wasn't so much worried about getting all wet again as just being cold.)

And then dinner! You really shouldn't go to Disneyland without stopping for a monte cristo sandwich at the Cafe Orleans. The fries were pretty tasty too.

The calm after the storm. Gorgeous.

This is from a series of photos. They're all funny but I particularly liked this one.

Saturday night ended with a little Disney magic. Kind of a long story and I'm already a bit long winded but I'll try to keep it short-ish. So you know those little Christmas villages that you can buy with all the cute tiny houses and cars and people and shops and things? Well they have a set of those miniatures of Disneyland. They are unbelieveably detailed and let's be honest, I'm a sucker for anything "miniature". (travel-size aisle at the drugstore? Anybody? Yeah, I thought so.) Not really the sort of thing I would spend my money on but I love to look at them. Anyhow, at one point in time, they used to make one of these miniatures of the Dumbo ride and Mom had seen it online. It has since been discontinued and is rather expensive and difficult to find.

While we were in a store on Mainstreet that had some of these miniatures Mom decided she would just go ahead and ask if maybe by chance they had one of these Dumbo ones. The man in the shop was really friendly and said he was sure he had seen one in the store room just the past week when he was looking for something else. So he went back and looked for us but, unfortunately, came back empty handed.

He was still convinced he had seen one and suggested that maybe it had been when he was in one of the other shops so he sent us over there to ask. The ladies at that store weren't quite as interesested in looking for it. They were certain that if they had one it would be out on display, but Mom asked really nicely and one of the ladies went to check the store room. Meanwhile, the other lady stepped into the office for a moment and then came out with a box in her hand. I got kind of excited but then realized she was helping another customer and thought maybe it was for him. Then she called us over -- she said it was just sitting in the office. Just sitting there! Mom had mentioned our family connection to the Dumbo ride and why it would be so special for her to find this, and it was so sweet because the lady actually got kind of emotional about it. She said she had never seen the piece before and she was so excited to take a peek at it and seemed to be genuinely touched by the sentiment behind the search. It was just this precious little magic Disney moment and it really felt like it was "meant to be." Of course the Dumbo miniature went home with Mom and now has it's special little place up on her mantle.

What a perfect way to end our evening!

It was raining cats and dogs when we stepped out of the shop but we made our way back down Mainstreet to thank the man who had helped us and to tell him that we found it. I loved it. Might not be a super exciting story for you, sorry about that, but I thought it was special.

As it turns out, Sunday morning after a SoCal "hurricane" is the PERFECT time to go to Disneyland! There were no waits at all, for anything, and we were able to go on more rides just in that morning than we had done almost all weekend! No rain on this day but windy and very cold indeed.

SUNSHINE!!!! Yeah Baby! Glad to know it's still there.

One of my favorite pics from the weekend -- we had just come out into the sun so the eye that's in the sunshine is kind of winking and for some reason I just think it's hilarious. Thank you Tara for making me laugh and for being so stinking cute.

One truly beautiful thing about our weekend: the flowers. They were just gorgeous! Everywhere you looked there were brightly colored spring blooms popping up. I think Mom took more pictures of flowers than she did of us :) We learned that they completely replant the entire park multiple times a year (can't remember the exact number), which means that these flowers are specific to the spring season and the flower beds will probably look completely different in a couple of months. We overheard this family in front of us in line for Peter Pan reading Disneyland trivia outloud from an app on their phone so then Mom found an app on her phone and started doing the same thing with us. It was pretty comical because she was having us guess the facts by asking us questions and we were WAY off almost every single time unless it was something we know from the Disney books we have at home.

We finished our Disneyland vacation with lunch outside at the River Belle Terrace. It felt like Disneyland came to life in the sunshine. I'm not even kidding. It was like a completely different place. We just sat there soaking up the sun, people watching, and enjoying our sandwiches. We made a quick stop in a few shops on the way out and then we were off to the airport.

Parducci/Sodoma girls (minus Mandie that is) in the sun!

It was a quick, wet, slightly ridiculous, and very fun weekend and I am so looking forward to doing it again sometime soon! We decided that as soon as I find out I'm pregnant we'll plan a Disneyland trip. It will be perfect for multiple reasons:

1. I am NOT going to Disneyland with a stroller. I just won't do it. So that will be a good time to get my fix before I begin my many stroller pushing years.

2. Steven will be more inclined to give in to my request if I'm pregnant, right?

3. I can eat whatever I want. Chocolate milk and churros all day. With a cup of Dole whip thrown in there every now and then. Who knows, maybe I'll want to dip the churro in the whip. That actually sounds kind of tasty...

It was so good to come home to Steven! He told me I would never understand how much he missed me (what a sweetheart!) and then he took me out for sushi :) I wish he liked going to Disneyland. I love it so much and was wishing all weekend that I could share it with him. I asked if we could plan a weekend trip down there sometime and just do it the way he would like it -- only the "fun" rides and lots of yummy food, and plenty of time for just relaxing in the hot tub. He said he thought that was doable but suggested we invite another couple along. Any volunteers?