Author: amyewhitelivecom

This year for Quinn\’s birthday we took a family trip to Disneyland.  We went down on Friday night and came home Sunday afternoon.

Our Disney experience started the moment we checked in at the hotel.  They had Quinn help with the check in process and gave him a Jr. Cast Member and a Birthday Button.

Free upgrade to a suite with a view?  Heck yeah!  A look down at the pool.

If you stay in the hotel, you have the benefit of entering one of the parks early so we decided to take full advantage of this.  Here we are at 6:45 am heading towards Disneyland.  So glad we decided to take a stroller.

By getting to the park early, we were able to walk on most of the rides with no wait.  I think we were able to do more stuff by noon than people that get their later and stay all day.

We walked right on to Space Mountain and I heard people talking about waiting 90 minutes to ride it later that day.  This was a ride Quinn does not want to ever to again.

Quinn wore his birthday button and got lots of Happy Birthdays! from the Crew Members.  At first he wasn\’t crazy about the attention but then started to enjoy it.

You can\’t do Disney and not ride It\’s a Small World.

I had made reservations for a character breakfast at 10 am in the park.  Quinn didn\’t really enjoy the character part of the breakfast.   They were all pointing out his birthday badge but Quinn wasn\’t quite in the happy birthday zone yet.

This was Quinn\’s favorite part of the trip.  Jedi Training!!  We had him wear his \”Yoda Man\” tshirt, his birthday badge, and jump up and down so he would be picked for the training.

Success!!

Working on their skills.  Right shoulder, left shoulder, right leg, left leg, head!

It\’s time to take down Darth Maul.

He loved that experience!

Time to head back to the hotel for a dip and a rest.  A look down from our room during the day.

After a good nap we headed back to the park for a couple more rides and the parade.

The schedule listed the fireworks as being cancelled (because of the wind) but they went off and we were able to watch them from our room.

Good night!  We had an early morning tomorrow.

Add this to all the other not-so-great school pictures.  He had a shower the night before and woke up with this party on the back of his head that I couldn\’t seem to tame.

In our little family, we celebrate all our birthdays in about a 3 week period.  This year we kinda punted it for our birthdays.  We have so much other stuff going on we didn\’t have the energy to plan for our usual birthday hoopla\’s.

For Don\’s birthday we were still in the hotel so we walked down to an italian restaurant.  Remember he got ties from me and triceratops water blasters from Quinn.  Wahoo!!

My birthday was a big one for me and we did a little bit of celebrating.  Saturday night we hired a sitter from an agency and went out for a nice evening.

Sunday morning, my birthday, Quinn gave me this heart felt card.

He thought it was perfect because it had both the word fart and stinky in it.  I loved it and would expect no less.

Then we headed north to Santa Barbara for lunch at a seaside restaurant.  It was a great little place tucked in to a cove.

I think all emergency potty breaks should have this kind of view.

This car had Don and I laughing all the way home.

After a late lunch, we just went right to dessert for dinner.

My birthday continued one more day with this lovely surprise from my dear friends in NJ on Monday.

It was nice to have a break from working on the house all weekend and enjoying some family time.