HAPPY 10 YEARS!!

January 8th, 10 years ago, I was married to my best friend.  

Since then we have had many adventures and amazing times.  To celebrate this time we have spent together we headed out to Disneyland for our anniversary.

 

Since we have been unable to see Disneyland at Christmas this year, I was excited to hear that the Disneyland Christmas Celebration was still going on for our weekend getaway.  Two things I love all rolled into one: Christmas & Disney!

We started off the weekend with dinner in Indio, CA, at this little pizza place we like, and then continued on to Anaheim.  When we arrived, I asked Andy if he would take me to the store, because I had forgot a few things, and he agreed. On the way back we stopped at Pinkberry!  Yum!!

When we got to Disneyland, it was pretty crowded, but we decided we would have a great time anyways.

I LOVE LOVE The Haunted Mansion at Halloween and Christmas, because they turn it in to the Nightmare Before Christmas, with Jack Skellington.

We then joined Winnie the Pooh for his Blustery Day adventure and grabbed a quick bite to eat at the new Jolly Holiday eatery.  It is SO cute! I also love how they are trying to steer away from complete junk food and offer sandwiches, salads, quiches and soups. 

From our table we were able to see the Christmas Fantasy Parade, which I loved!  Totally Holiday!! 

We also found out that they were having a Dia de Los Reyes celebration, or 3 Kings Day celebration in Frontierland, and went to check it out.  It was so fun! They had Mickey and Minnie doing traditional dances with the dancers, crown making, face painting, traditional food for the holiday and much more.

The Dia de los Reyes is a traditional feast day to celebrate the manifestation to the world that Jesus is the Son of God.  This celebration is traditionally celebrated on January 6th. 

Then off to dinner and fireworks! Yummy, Yummy!

The fireworks were all done to Christmas music and were just absolutely beautiful!  At the end they played White Christmas and then had it snow down Main Street! What a great way to end a fantastic day!

On Sunday, January 8th, we decided to eat an early lunch and head home.  We made reservations for the Blue Bayou for a romantic lunch. We were able to get a water table, and enjoy the ambiance of the ride. What a fun anniversary lunch!

Thank you honey for making this the most AMAZING 10 years I could ever ask for!  You are so sweet, kind, generous and loving in all that you do for me and others! I think you are the greatest husband and friend!  Thanks for everything, including my fun anniversary weekend!

YOU ARE MY FAVORITE...

ANOTHER YEAR DOWN FOR DISNEYLAND!!

Dear Disneyland,

We will dearly miss you and our season passes.  We hope to be back again soon... until then we will relish in the memories and look forward to the changes and new attractions that are happening now!  Thanks again for another great year!!

Sincerely,
Andrew & Ashley

DISNEYLAND PHOTO BOOK!

I found a coupon for a free photo book from MixBook.com, and I decided to make it of my Disneyland trips.  What a fun way to relive the memories and not have all the work of actually scrapbooking!

There ended up being a couple issues with the coupon code, and apparently the company sent out the coupon to only a few of their close associates.  The coupon went viral, and they received MANY more coupons than expected.  I e-mailed them, and they were very quick to respond.  They also gave me a temporary code for a free book.

Thanks Mixbook.com
Or come check out the full book here.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

REMINISCING...

WOW!! I know I am behind... please forgive me, but until more updates...

I was looking through old photos today, remembering just how much I LOVE fireworks!  Even more than my surprising love of fireworks is my love to take pictures of fireworks... and castles (when possible,) but really just fireworks. Here are a few that I found.

I'll update soon!! Lots to blog about, I'm a few trips behind!

UNTIL I POST AGAIN...

IT'S BEEN FUN...

Andy and I decided that we would take one last trip to Disneyland before our season passports expired. He felt that since it is going to be our last trip there in a while he would spoil me and surprised me with 2 nights at the Disneyland Hotel. We left early Friday morning and drove to Anaheim. When we arrived Andy thought that it would be fun to walk around Downtown Disney, considering we couldn't check into our hotel yet. (I was led to believe we were staying in a Quality Inn down the street.) Andy told me that he had not ever stayed at the Disneyland Hotel, so he wanted to go check it out. The grounds were beautiful and they had so many fun things to do. When we left the Downtown Disney parking lot, Andy turned the wrong way and then turned into the Disneyland Hotel parking lot. I kept telling him that was for the hotel only, and then he said, "SURPRISE!" It was super sweet. When we checked in they gave us a room in the Wonder Tower on the 14th floor. In front of the Wonder Tower there were these beautiful waterfalls and elaborate pathways throughout. It was really fun!!
The rooms were great too! Everything was Disney, and it was super fun!! I took a couple pictures of us from the balcony, even though it was a "Standard View Room" it was a great view of the parking lot and California adventure. (Check out the hair clip I made for our Disney Vacay.)One of our goals for that trip was to go early and find a good seat for the fireworks. We headed over to the park on Friday night and started looking for a good spot. Most of the good spots with seats had already been taken, but one woman told us we could have her seat. We really tried not to take her seat, but she insisted. What a nice lady!! We even told her if she was uncomfortable (it was not the most comfortable seat,) we would save her a seat for when the fireworks started, and she declined. There was still some traffic that walked through the first half right in front of us, but we definitely had a MUCH, MUCH better view this time!!

After the fireworks, we were hoping to run over to the other nighttime show at Disneyland, Fantasmic. We had never seen it before, and had no idea what to expect. It turned out really fun, with light shows on walls of water, princesses floating by on boats, Peter Pan and Hook dueling it out on the Riverboat Columbia, all the Disney characters riding by on a ferryboat, and even Mickey Mouse himself battling an angry witch turned dragon. It turned out to be REALLY fun!!We ended up having a really great time!! I sure do love Disneyland, and I will totally miss my season pass.

TA TA FOR NOW!! (WE'LL BE BACK)

DISNEYLAND... AGAIN!

This last weekend, we decided to go to Disneyland... again! This time we thought it would be super fun to go with our friends, Tommy and Alisha. The trip began Friday, when everyone left work a little early and we drove to California. On the way there we drove past the wind farm and just HAD to take pictures. :) Also, on our way there, we had an amazing sunset that we drove away into, it was beautiful! That night we ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then watched the fireworks from our hotel.






The next morning we got up early and walked over to Disneyland!! Out front we found some beautiful rose gardens, I had never noticed them before. The first ride we went on was, of course, Buzz Lightyear, and then off to Star Tours, Space Mountain, Autopia and Finding Nemo. What a great start! When Finding Nemo was over it was definitely PAST time to find a CORN DOG! (I absolutely LOVE LOVE Disneyland's corn dogs!) After corn dogs, we were right back at it! It was SUPER hot and humid this time, but we still had a really great time! We made it the WHOLE day, and ended up leaving around 11:45 pm, and we didn't even rest to see the fireworks! :)

On Sunday, we ended up going to breakfast at Knott's Berry Farms for brunch, and then walking around Downtown Disney before starting the drive home. Along the drive we found an outlet mall, and stopped for a little while for a nice little break. It turned out to be a great, fun weekend!!

THANKS GUYS FOR SUCH A FUN WEEKEND!!

A QUICK TRIP!!

For a little while now, Andy has been having the Disneyland itch. He has been trying to talk our friends into the idea, and then finally decided that we were going, and that was that. We were both super excited and then talked to our friends Tonya and David, and they said that they would love to come too!! Hooray, trip planned!! :)

Since everyone had to work on Friday, we decided that we would make it a QUICK trip and would leave Saturday morning, and then come home after we left the park on Sunday night. Tonya had never been to Disneyland and David had gone once when he was about 12. We were going to have SO MUCH FUN!!


Everyone was in and the car was ready to go Saturday morning at 8:45. Off we went. On the way we drove through this really cool windmill farm, and I tried to take some pictures as we drove. Later on we stopped at McDonalds in Indio for lunch, and had a nice stretch, and then checked into our hotel about 2:30. Saturday night we decided that we would appease me and go to H&M and Pinkberry then head to dinner and hang out in Downtown Disney for fireworks and then retire to bed early for an early start. Everything went great until we tried to go to Downtown Disney and David had a pocketknife in his pocket and a creepy Disney security guard came up to him and said, you have a knife in your right pocket, we do not allow knifes in the park. It was TOTALLY CRAZY!! David never took the knife out of his pocket, HOW DID THEY KNOW?!? Well that was a good giggle and we decided to return to the car. On the way back, the fireworks started and so we watched them where we were.


Sunday morning we were able to get up and get Tonya and David's tickets and be in the park by 8:15!! WAY TO GO!! We had a super great day! The best ride ended up being Autopia (the little cars on a track,) and we didn't even ride it! After standing in line for about 10 min, they came over the loud speaker and said that the ride had technical difficulties and they would not be able to open the ride for 1/2 hour or so. As we were watching to see what to do, people kept staying in line in front of us but everyone behind us went out the back. We started to leave and then a park employee told us to stay and get a "remit" ticket. Not knowing what a remit ticket was we were really skeptical, and then we found out it would let you skip the line on any attraction in either park except Toy Story Mania. Then, to make it even better, a guy told us to split up and then we could get 2 for our group!! AWESOME!! We ended up using one for Splash Mountain and bypassed that 50 min line, and then right before we were about to leave David started talking about Alice in Wonderland and I asked him if he wanted to go on the Alice in Wonderland ride. We tried to use our second remit ticket for it, the guy let us on and then told us to keep it and use it on Peter Pan. I think he thought we were crazy for using such a valuable thing for Alice in Wonderland. When we were finished we used it for Peter Pan. Right before the fireworks Tonya and David made a detour through Tomorrowland where they were able to make their very own light sabers!! They were HILARIOUS!!


The fireworks were good, but we listened to some not so great advice and sat right behind a tree for the fireworks.... oh well. It was still fun. After the fireworks we headed home. It was A LONG NIGHT! We finally got home about 5:00 am, and were ALL exhausted!!

Thanks guys for such a great QUICK trip!!