Hello! Home: Disneyland (the first of many....)

so we opted out of a big party for baby girl's second birthday and instead, decided to splurge on some Disney passes. luckily, we don't have to pay for baby girl until she's 3 so we're going to make the most of this last year of the kid freebie pass to disney. i don't anticipate blogging about disneyland all that much (*ahem unless disney decides to pick me up as a blogger *ahem) so here is my UNPAID very honest and very random (as is most of my fodder) disney musings....

we went back and forth on which pass to get. do we go with the super reasonably priced SoCal passes that basically limit your visits to weekdays and absolutely zero days in the summer and holidays?

or do we go with the next level up that gets you in on weekends, some holidays, and most of the summer?

or do we really go balls to the wall and get the zero black out date passes?

I'm a middle of the road kind of gal. i also like the idea of visiting the park on weekends so that was an easy choice for us....next up....parking.

do we buy the parking passes or do we listen to all of our friends and park at downtown disney even though it says, "no theme park parking." (disclaimer: i love to follow the rules, especially when it comes to disneyland BUT we like the idea of walking through downtown disney for food options before/after going to the park so parking there actually makes the most sense for us anyway). ultimately we decided to bypass the parking passes. and so far we've visited disney twice with our passes. The first day was a holiday and parking was free at downtown disney. the next time we went, we stayed for 3.5 hours and thought we were going to have to pay the $6 for that extra .5 hour (you get the first three hours free when you park there) but then somehow didn't get charged as we left so both days we have visited we've scored free parking!

so here we are with our passes and two official disney visits (in two weeks). We have an entire 340 days left to visit disney as much as our little hearts desire (minus the limited black out dates).

we've already discovered a ton of unknowns just by downloading the disney app and can't wait to become disney regulars that know all the shortcuts and tips and tricks....stay tuned!

in the meantime, here's the roundup of ina's second birthday celebration at disneyland!

so this ride actually has a steering wheel that you can pull up or down to adjust the height of your little rocket ship. I, however, was too focused on hanging on to my tiny toddler with one hand and gripping on to the side of the rocket with the other. the tiny toddler, however, had her arms up the entire time, yelling "WEEEEEEE!!!!!"

snacking while waiting in line to see peter pan and tinker bell.

totally passed out -- time for mommy and daddy to eat some lunch (perhaps enjoy a drink) and wait for the rest of the gang to arrive.....

first disney family pic! Ina loves NOT looking at the camera for pictures

the disney gang. that's my sister and some of our bestest friends ever. fernando was in our wedding and gladis is just one of my favorite people on the planet.