4th Annual Disneyland Pilgrimage!

Yes, WAAAY back in March, Cassie and I headed south for our fourth annual pilgrimage to Disneyland.  We arrived late in the evening at LAX, made our way to the hotel in Anaheim, and then headed to Walmart for hotel-room-picnic supplies!

 A few hours of sleep later, we're off to DISNEYLAND!  So excited for our first ride of the day:  the tram from the Mickey and Friends parking area!  Wheeeee!

Cassie enjoyed seeing the costumes from Once Upon a Time in the shop windows on Hollywood Way in California Adventure.

 She also enjoyed beating my score in Toy Story Mania.

 I saved this bite of corndog for Lori, but she wasn't able to come enjoy it.  :'-(

 We found a hidden Mickey while waiting in the short line for Mater's Junkyard Jamboree!

 We were looking like responsible citizens, so a CM asked us to carry this little card to the front of the line!  (For those who should know this but don't, Cast Members give these cards to guests so they can accurately display wait times for popular rides.)

Sunday was Shopping Day!  We stopped for fuel first, and a VERY perky girl welcomed us with free samples.  She was possibly on her own sugar-fueled high.  Is there anything better than a warm Krispy Kreme doughnut? 

 And then we got to see Wicked!  And it was WICKED AWESOME!  We are still listening to the soundtrack and singing along in the car.

 This is the theater in Costa Mesa.

 And the view of the stage from our very far away seats in the theater.  Didn't matter that we were so far away.  The musical was absolutely amazing.

 Wetzel's Pretzels has this blue raspberry lemonade.  When Cassie ordered it, I said "that's a lot of food coloring!"  She didn't exactly believe me when I told her that her tongue was BLUE!

 Starbucks is way better.  No artificial coloring.  And look how cool she looks in her Coach shades...

 On Monday we were stalking some people...

 It's Mikie!

 Mike and Dawn made it a 24-hour adventure and joined us for the day at California Adventure.  It is SO much fun to stand in a 2-hour-long line with Dawn and Mike!  Seriously!

 Go to Mike's blog to see the picture that he took here...

 I think he was cheating off of Dawn's paper at Animation Academy...

 Color coordinated!  She kinda is a super hero!

 Outside the Cozy Cone Motel.

 Got gas?  Mm hm.

On Tuesday we used our Magic Morning admission to ride the new Matterhorn (disappointed in the new seats), Astro Orbiters, and then got in line for Space Mountain.

 So why were we the ONLY people on the tram LEAVING the park at 9:30 a.m.?

 Because we were headed to Camp Pendelton to pick up ARNOLD!!!

 He returned from Afghanistan on Monday and we were thrilled to be able to spend a few hours with him on Tuesday at the now even happier Disneyland Resort.

 This might look like a kiddie ride, but it's super fun.

 See how happy they are?

And then on Wednesday we left super early for our super early flight from LAX (Cassie didn't even go to sleep since we really only had an hour by the time we took Arnold back to base and drove back to the hotel).  We were pretty exhausted, and we had a NINE HOUR layover in Juneau on the way home, so we rented a car and drove out to the Shrine of St. Therese (among other things).  It was FREEZING and we didn't have warm coats -- we just came back from California!  But here's proof that we walked across the causeway in 19 degree weather...