day five . . .coming home

Well, well, well.  It's only taken me two weeks to document our five day trip.  Right now, I'm thinking that's not so bad.

On our last morning, the girls decided that life wouldn't be complete without a few hours at the swimming pool.  I can't say that I blamed them.  After all, water + sunshine in March?  I agreed that they better soak in every last minute.  I stayed and packed up our stuff while the girls went to the pool with Daddy.  We have a bunch of little fish on our hands.

 We left all our baggage locked up at the hotel and went to spend a few last hours at the park.  We had told the girls we'd spend a little bit of time looking for souvenirs (after all, they had to spend all those stars they'd earned!).  We also bought lunch in the park, which we were too cheap to do on an everyday basis.  Ryenne (our resident carnivore) had seen a few people walking around with some kind of big leg o' meat for a few days, and although she hadn't asked, we could tell that she sure thought it looked yummy.  Her Dad was bent on finding her one.  This took us a little while, and she was so worried about having us spend so much time (and hard-earned $!) that she was almost in tears by the time we located her a turkey leg.  She happens to be our most frugal child, but after her Dad insisted that he wanted to get her one and would even share it with her, she was happy as a clam with her hunk of meat. 

Emmy and Kate settled on a corn dog (we're high class around here).

The girls spent the next while looking for a perfect souvenir.  It was fun to watch them compare prices and try to get the best deal for their buck.  After much deliberation, Emmy settled on a set of Tinkerbell pollypockets and a coloring book (which, in order to keep in mint condition, she now copies pages on the copy machine before coloring).  Ryenne and Kate chose charms for a charm bracelet, and Claire picked out a little stuffed Winnie the Pooh (her favorite).

I have to admit, I wondered if five days was going to be a bit too much.  We decided to spend five on the advice of a few friends and because we decided not to rent a car while we were there.  Having done it though, I thought it worked out great.  We weren't rushed, spent our time doing whatever the girls had in mind, and didn't get too stressed over the weekend crowds because we'd had time to do most everything we wanted.  In fact, when it was time to go catch our ride to the airport, the girls were so reluctant to leave.  As we were walking out of California Adventure, I looked over at Ryenne to see her looking so sad.  She looked at me, almost in tears, and said, "I'm not ready to go."  I think we were all a little sad to see our magical little vacation end and head back into real life.  My brother likes to say, "Disneyland. . .the happiest place on Earth and more screamin' kids than you'll ever see."  Happily for us, the only time we worried about extra sad kids was when we had to go home! 

I'll always look back on this trip as being magical.  Maybe not so much the place that we went, but the company we kept!  It makes me want to do my best to make our home somewhere we can call the "Happiest Place on Earth!"