Disneyland!

Today is a day that I will never forget. Such a special memory and a rare opportunity. Mark and I got to take Emmory to California Adventure at Disneyland. I always cherish any time we both get to spend with just one child because it doesn't happen very often, but this was extra special because of where we got to go. And even though I am exhausted and just want to go to sleep, I am staying up to write this so I don't forget anything. Disneyland opened up the new Cars Land at their California Adventure park this summer, they recreated the town of radiator springs, and of course have rides and one of the coolest things is they have life size Lightning and Mater characters driving in the road and you can talk to them and get your picture taken with them. I was a little unsure of how Emmory was going to like all the rides...he's never been on any rides before and you just never know how they are going to react. Well Emmory really surprised me. He LOVED the rides and the faster, the better. I thought we would spend all our time on the small baby rides, but after we walked by the roller coaster in California Adventure, he kept insisting on wanting to ride it. It shoots you out at the beginning really fast and has a loop...I told him all this and he said "I wanna go upside down". Mark suggested we take him on another roller coaster that is milder, the goofy coaster, and see how he liked that first. Well to my surprise, he really liked it. He would giggle every time we went down a hill. It was so cute. Mark was going to take him on the big roller coaster, but he didn't meet the height requirement for it (he barely met the goofy coaster one, they ended up checking him 3 times). So we went on Soarin' over California and Grizzly River Run. And of course we went on all the rides at Carsland first thing, and we also went on the ferris wheel, the toy story shooting game ride, the bugs land rides, and the Little Mermaid ride at California Adventure. We ate lunch at Flo's Cafe in Carsland, had his picture taken with Lightning and Mater, and the big surprise of the night....we got to go into Disneyland too. We had gotten fast passes for the main ride in Carsland because that was the only ride with a really long line, we rode it first thing in the morning and waited 60 minutes, and got a fast pass for later in the day so he could ride it again, well when we went back to ride it, the ride was broken down, and they weren't letting anybody ride it or get in line. At that point, we were all exhausted, it was 6:00 and we had been going since the park opened at 10, and had planned that that would be our last ride of the night. Well Mark ended up talking to somebody about the ride being broken down, and they offered us tickets to get into Disneyland and fast passes for whatever rides we wanted. We were so tired, but the lady asked Emmory if he wanted to ride more rides, and all of the sudden he got a burst of energy and said "Yes!". So we ended up going into Disneyland with about an hour and a half left before it closed, and we rode Thunder Mountain railroad, Peter Pan, and Finding Nemo. Once we got back to the car and on the road, it took less than 10 minutes for the boy to pass out and we couldn't wake him to eat his food when we went through a drive-thru (In-n-Out, of course!). We had such a great time with him, and I am really thankful that he enjoyed it.
These are the things I jotted down that night, that I didn't want to forget about the trip (obviously I didn't end up finishing this post that night): His giggle on the goofy coaster, his patience in the lines, his thankfulness for food and drinks, his somber face as he was taking it all in, his excitement on the way to the park when he saw the Cars bus, picking out his souvenir, asking "what are we gonna do next?" as soon as we got off a ride.
Here are some pics from the day.