Celebrating Disneyland Style Day 2

Can you believe it?? I finally wrote a recap of day 2, and it only took me a little over 2 weeks to do it!!
On day 2 we decided we were going to do the parks in the opposite order so we hit California Adventure a little after opening and headed straight back to Radiator Springs Racer!! It was closed the day before, and the fast pass return time was already up to 5:00pm so we were hoping the stand-by line wouldn’t be too bad.

It said 75 minutes, which for newer rides isn’t all that bad so we decided to brave the line. This was by far the longest line of the whole trip, but the kids did rather well. “The Boy” did want to be held a lot, but at least he wasn’t whiney about it.

We all rode it and there was a mixed reaction among us. My mom and I have ridden it before and both really like it, but this was the first time for the kids. #1 & #2 both loved it and wanted to ride it again, while #3 hated every minute of it and will never go on it again. The boy seemed to enjoy most of it, until the dips when we were race. Since he is a bit of a little guy those negative G’s were a bit much for him, but he didn’t complain! 

After the ride we stuck around Cars Land for a bit and rode the other rides they have to offer and enjoyed Radiator Springs in all it’s Christmas glory! They have a lot of trees there and they are all so unique. Here are a few of my favorites.


Up next the kids wanted to hit Bug’s Land so that is what we did. Amazingly “The Boy” insists that “the caterpillar” is his favorite ride, although I’m not sure I agree with him. We hit a few of the rides there and then it was on to my absolute favorite ride, Toy Story Mania!!


I am so bummed that TSM does not have fast passes at California Adventure, but thankfully the wait was only about 30 minutes, because this is a must do ride for me!

I had “The Boy” next to me and he had such a blast it made it that much better for me. Every time we moved to the next game he would do a fist pump and declare that he won that round! He was rather disappointed when we got to the end and he found out that I actually had the high score for the whole car!!

By now it was about 2 o’clock so we decided we better get some lunch. I’ll be honest here, I am not as impressed with the food choices at the Disneyland Resort as I am at Disney World, but I do like what I have tried at the Pacific Warf area of California Adventure. I was really hoping to try some of the clam chowder at Pacific Warf Cafe, but the line was really long the whole time we were there so that didn’t happen. Instead we ate at Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill, which is really good.

After lunch we headed over to the Animation Academy, as this is one of “Artsy Girl’s” favorite things at Hollywood Studios. Here we all tried our hands at drawing Agent P. I don’t think we did too bad. Can you guess who’s is who’s? I’ll give you a hint none of them are “The Boy’s” since he only scribbled all over his paper. ;)

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After playing around in Beast’s library, and getting our voices stolen by Ursula we decided it would be a good time to go to Disneyland and ride a few of the rides, like It’s a Small World, that we didn’t do on the first day. The girls also wanted to take another spin in the teacups. We spent most of the evening in Fantasyland riding my ‘classic’ favorites like Snow White and Pinocchio. When coming out of Pinocchio we spotted this guy! I <3 him!!



We were in line for Peter Pan when the boy decided he had to go to the bathroom. My mom took the girls and Peter Pan, while “The Boy” and I went to use the restroom an then rode on Dumbo . . . again. The Christmas Parade was going on at this time so the line was really short! We ended up waiting just about 10 minutes to get on the ride, and those of you out there with Dumbo lovers know how rare that is! 

After we rode everything there was in Fantasyland we decided we wanted to head back to California Adventure to end our evening with a hot cocoa from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop. Unfortunately, our timing was not as good as the day before and we got caught in the end of the parade mess. That always scares me, but alas we did make it out of the park safely and did not lose a single kid, so I call it a success.

We made our way over to Ghirardelli’s and was greeted by a CM handing out samples of peppermint bark. I had actually tried it before at the Ghirardelli Shop in Monetary last year and was surprised by how much I liked it since I am not a huge peppermint fan.

The 3 girls all got small hot cocoas, while I found myself intrigued by the salted caramel hot cocoa, and got a medium. We sat outside the shop for a bit enjoying the best hot cocoa we have had in a long time and then decided to make a loop around Paradise Pier while World Of Color was going on, before heading back to the car and home for the night.

I have to say it was a very nice ending to a wonderful trip. How can you not be happy when you get to see something like this on your way out of the park??

Foodie Friday: Holiday Breakfasts

My kids are big on holiday traditions, so we have many, but one of my favorites is our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning breakfasts.

For Christmas Eve I keep it simple and we make a Christmas tree out of cinnamon rolls. We simply buy 2 cans of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and arrange them on a cookie sheet to look like a tree. Then bake them at 375° for 20-25 minutes.

Pay special attention to the rolls in the middle, as those will take the longest to cook.

Once the rolls are cooked you simply ice them and add sprinkles!

Now the breakfast for Christmas morning takes more prep so I make it on Christmas Eve as well. I start by baking a fresh loaf (or 2) of challah bread using the recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Honestly, this is the only way I make bread. It’s so easy and convenient, if you haven’t tried it you should. I make two so that we can eat one now and still have the second one to actually use for breakfast.

If baking bread isn’t your thing you can buy challah bread at some bakeries, or you could use Texas toast or any “thick” bread of your choice, but you really should try fresh baked challah at least once.  

Now what do I make with that beautiful bread, you ask?? How about some Crème Brûlée French Toast. That is the original recipe that I have adjusted and adapted a little over the years. This is how I usually make it now.

1 Loaf of challah bread sliced thickly

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

5 large eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup heavy cream or half and half (whatever you have on hand)

1 teaspoon vanilla

You start by melting the butter in a heavy sauce pan on medium heat. Next whisk in the brown sugar and corn syrup and continue whisking until it is smooth. Pour the caramel sauce into the bottom of a casserole dish making sure to cover the whole bottom.

Nestle the bread slices into the caramel, making sure to they are as much of the bottom of the dish as you can.

Whisk eggs, milk, heavy cream and vanilla together and pour over the bread.

Cover and refrigerate over night

In the morning when we get up to open presents I take the dish out and preheat the oven to 375°. Once the oven is up to temperature bake for about 40 minutes or until the edges start to turn a golden brown.    

Foodie Friday: Christmas Cookies

Every year we bake Christmas cookies as a family. Some recipes have been one and done and some seem to make the list year after year. Those are the ones I am going to share with you today. 

One of my favorites is this Mocha Crinkle Recipe.

I have an old cookbook that use to be my grandma’s and there are a few recipes that she had put a star on the page in pencil to indicate that she was going to make it so the first year I got the book I went through and made all the recipes she had made and I fell in love with this one.

Unfortunately, the cookbook is packed away in storage, but I was so excited to find the recipe on Pinterest so that we can continue the tradition of making them! The website even has the exact same photo as my book!!

When you have kids Sugar Cookies are a must! We like to use this recipe and then make up some royal frosting so that they can decorate them. Of course we also keep plenty of sprinkles on hand as well.   

Of course you can’t bake Christmas cookies and not make chocolate chip. Around here we love our Ghirardelli chocolate so we tend to make the recipe on the package, which can also be found here. We either make that, or this Toll House recipe (which also happens to be in my grandma’s cookbook), with Ghirardelli baking chips instead. (Shhhh don’t tell).

This last recipe is newer to the group, but my number one favorite!

Pecan Sables

1 package Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix

1/2 cup softened butter

1 egg

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

1 bag pecan halves (16 oz or larger)

• Preheat oven to 375° (350° for dark nonstick cookie sheets)
• Mix cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl and set aside
• Prepare the sugar cookie mix according to the package directions.
• Add the chopped pecans to the dough and mix well
• Roll one tablespoon of dough into a ball
• Roll the ball of dough in the cinnamon sugar
• Place dough on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart
• Top each ball of dough with a pecan halve
• Bake for 8-10 minutes
• Cool for 1 minute before moving the baked cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely

What are you Christmas Cookie traditions? Do you stay with tried and true, or do you like to mix up a bit?

What’s Up Wednesday: 12/11 Edition

First off, day two of our Disneyland trip is still coming, I promise. Unfortunately we all managed to bring colds back with us so that has hampered my blogging a bit.

Moms are not suppose to get sick, and surely they are not allowed to get sick at the same time as the kids, so I’m med’ing up and trucking on.

Last month New Balance and runDisney announced that pink Minnie and Sorcerer Mickey would be featured on the 2014 runDisney exclusive version of the 860v3 model stability running shoe. For all of you neutral shoe runners out there this was your lucky week because New Balance has now revealed that they will also be releasing Goofy and Cinderella in a neutral model!!

I am hoping that this might mean that the shoes will be a little easier to obtain, but I’m pretty sure it will just mean that there will be plenty of people buying both models.

Honestly, I am not too keen on the characters being featured on the shoes. It kind of reminds me of the shoes I use to wear as a kid with the puffy sticker character sewn on the side of them. Hopefully once I see them I can get past that, or if not it will save me some money. ;)      

And now onto the subject of training. To make it simple it just plane ain’t happening. Maybe this whole 10k one day and half marathon the next isn’t such a great idea anymore. But one way or another I’ll get it done. 

With that I leave you with this Hey Girl, because I think it will make me feel just a little bit better. :)

Celebrating Disneyland Style Day 1

I love Christmas and I love Disney so you combine the two and you have one happy Summer!

Chyenne’s birthday was on Tuesday so we decided to drive out Monday evening so that we could wake up, eat and hit the parks first thing, and we did just that.

The kids decided they wanted to go to Disneyland first so that is what we did. Our first stop was City Hall to get Chyenne a Happy Birthday button. Apparently that was the same plan many others had since the line was pretty long, and took awhile. Eventually we did get the button and were ready to let the fun begin!

My mom and the kids decided that they would get in line to see Mickey as I waited in line at City Hall and I was done just in time to join them for this picture! I just adore the characters all dressed up for winter ! !

After a few pics we were ready to hit the rides! First up was Winnie the Pooh, one of my personal favorites. Once we got off the ride we noticed the line for Tigger and Pooh was really short so we thought we better get in it and get a few more winter character pics!

Up next we visited The Haunted Mansion Nightmare Before Christmas style! I absolutely love the Haunted Mansion this time of year. Jack Skellington and Zero take over in such a magical way that includes a haunted gingerbread house that you can smell as you pass by, ghoulish presents galore and snow a plenty! 

From there we hit the preschooler friendly rides as we made our way over to Toontown to check out the homes of the big guy and gal themselves, and of course took some more pics.

We had a great time at Disneyland and a little before 5 we had done most of what we wanted to do so we decided to head on over to California Adventure. We actually timed it pretty well and caught the Main Street Tree Lighting Ceremony as we made our way down Main Street USA. One of my favorite things about Disneyland growing up was how magical it looks all lit up, and watching the lights coming on down Main Street all at once never gets old!! 

One of the things I love most about Disneyland Resort is how easy it is to park hop. For those of you who have never been, you can literally walk out of the turnstiles of one park, across an open area and into the turnstiles of the other!  It’s so convenient that we often go back and forth as we please!

Once in California Adventure we made our way to Carsland, which is always amazing at night, but is even more amazing at Christmas time!! Unfortunately I don’t have any pics to share since we managed to kill the batteries in 2 cell phones and our camera before we made it there!!! But we did spy Santa flying by Hyperion Theater, home of the Aladdin Musical. After riding Monsters Inc. we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel to recharge so we can do it all again the next day!!

Stay tuned for day 2 and, of course, a lot more pictures!

Foodie Friday: Disney Holiday Treats

In honor of our trip to Disneyland this week (recap coming this weekend) I decided to make this week’s Foodie Friday food porn from our trip.
I am very proud to say that I did not eat any of these wonderful #LimitedTimeMagic treats, although I wish I did. :)

What is your “must have” treat at Disney?

What's Up Wednesday 12/4 Edition

Lots of fun this week! Yesterday was #2's birthday and we spent it at Disneyland!! We had a lot of fun and are going back for more today. :) Watch both my blog here and DisBroads.com for my recaps and tons of pics coming later this week. 

We also caught a little extra magic as the cast of Dog with a Blog were in the park filming!! We were actually riding the teacups and saw the cameras filming the ride and then saw a crowd gathering. Once our ride was over we decided to ride Alice in Wonderland next and that is when we saw the cast going in the exit followed by the camera crew. Now only if we were 2 groups later we might have made a cameo. I will definitely be watching for this episode just in case. 

#1 totally fangirled out, which really surprised me since she doesn't even really watch the show like #3 does. It was really fun to see her that excited over seeing them, though.

Last week I also started doing Focus T25, and I am excited to say that I am down 2 pounds after just one week!! This week is a little off with our Disneyland trip so tomorrow I am going to pick back up with the second half of week one and will continue on to week two next week. I also have to get back to running or Tinker Bell will be even uglier then I already expect it to be. 

For right now things are going I the right direction (finally) so I really want to keep the momentum going!

Anyone have anything exciting to share from their week? 

What’s Up Wednesday: 11/26 Edition

I am still alive and kicking, in case you were wondering. I’ve been busy helping my mom rearrange the house for Christmas and getting ready for Thanksgiving, as well as trying to get the girls ahead in school so we won’t have to worry about it at Disneyland, next week!! 

I started Focus T25 on Monday and I am sore from my waist to my knees, and this is just from 2 workouts!! As things progress I will keep you updated, but for right now I love that it is only 25 minutes, and it is a great workout in those 25 minutes, but I’m not sure how much I like the actual workouts themselves. I always tend to be a little iffy until I get the hang of the sequences and I feel like I know what I am doing.

It’s also about time for me to get back to running since the Tinker Bell half marathon weekend is creeping up on me pretty quickly. (49 days y’all) I also thought it was a great idea to sign up for the 10k so I need to start getting some back to back runs in, because I don’t normally do those!

Right now my plan is to do the 10k for time, since my current proof (and PR) are set to expire, and then take it easy at the half and take advantage of the photo ops with my fellow DisBroads.

This will be something new for me, since I have only stopped for 1 character pic in the past, and that was at this years Princess Half Marathon, but I am sure it will be fun. And of course at the end of the weekend I will be adding these beauties to my collection, and really that is what it is all about for me. Although, I still wish they were a challenge since Dumbo and Glass Slipper are, but oh well. 

So that is what is up this week. Next week What’s Up Wednesday will be brought to you from Disneyland!! So it should be filled with complete awesomeness!! #DisneyHolidays

RnR Las Vegas, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Before signing up for this race, in March, I was well aware that it had a bit of a sorted past. I figured what the heck I’d give it a try since it was a unique experience. I don’t see me doing this race again, but I’m glad that I gave it a go.

The race festivities started around 3 pm in a parking lot across from Luxor with a concert by the All American Rejects!! They also had bagels and water available for runners, which was nice.

I arrived at the parking lot around 3:30 and made my way over to the UPS bag check area. I thought this meant it was somehow sponsored by UPS, which still might have been the case, but it was also actual UPS trucks. I walked up to the Ho-Joe truck and dropped off a jacket for the walk back to my hotel after the race and the truck drove it down to the finish line for me.

After a few texts back and forth and a finally a phone call I met up with one of my friend Jaime, who was also running the half. We chatted for awhile as we listened to the concert until it was time to start heading to the corrals. The concert ran over about 15 minutes, so around 4:15 we started heading to our corrals, but not before snapping this quick selfie in front of the Sphinx. The corral system was a bit of mess. They had signs up saying which corral was what, but apparently those signs were incorrect so they had people holding smaller signs with the new corral locations. I found corral 23 pretty easily and made sure to stay in the back since I wasn’t sure how my body was going to hold up. The corrals were pretty much on an honor code type of thing and there were people just jumping in wherever they felt like it. It also took a long time to get everyone to the start line. After about a half an hour it was finally my turn to make it to the start line and John Bingham gave us some last minute advise to have fun as we headed out on our 13.1 mile journey through the streets of Las Vegas.

      

We passed by the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign twice and headed down the strip where the street was lined with spectators. For the first 2.5 miles I was keeping pace with the 2:30 pace group, but lost track of them around mile 3.Sadly a lot of the ambiance was lost on me because I tend to space out when I race. I miss a lot of what goes on around me, as I try not to trip over or run into anyone, but I didn’t miss this . . .

Apparently I timed it pretty well and the volcano in front of the Mirage was going off as I ran by! That was pretty cool.

I continued down the strip high fiving anyone with their hand out as I went by. As I got closer to the end of the strip the spectators started thinning out and by the time I saw this sign they were pretty sparse.

Honestly, I was not a fan of any of the “downtown” part of the race. In many places it was really dark and and the roads where in bad shape so we really had to watch our step very closely, which was difficult since it was so dark. I was also disappointed to find that even though I started in the second corral for the half marathon they had ran out of GUs before I got to the 8-ish mile mark where they were giving them out. I always bring my own fuel, just for this reason. Even though I don’t use GUs it annoyed me that they didn’t have enough to give to those who might have been counting on them. This was actually the first race I have ran where they actually ran out of things on the course.

Miles 7-9 were pretty boring and rough on me. My hip was doing surprisingly well, but I was so hungry and my feet hurt really bad since I thought it was a good idea to walk (3 miles) to the expo and back the day before. As I was nearing mile 10 I could see runners in the later corrals still heading toward the downtown area so I was checking the bib numbers trying to figure out if I had missed Jaime, or if I might run into her on the course, and then there she was right in front of the pawn shop so we took another quick selfie out on the course. From here I just trucked along to the finish line doing a combo of jogging, sprinting and walking. Since I had fell back a few corrals during the race it started getting pretty crowded toward the end. This was also because we met back up with the full marathon participants so we each only got one lane of space and at this time there were many more half marathon runners then full.

Soon enough I could see the finish line and I sprinted toward it weaving in and out of the other runners. Finally I finished the race and went on to get all of my goodies. Since I hadn’t fueled properly I started feeling quite nauseous, but after I grabbed my chocolate milk from Team Refuel (sshhhh I grabbed an extra as I walked by) and downed it I started to feel a little better.

I went on to get my bag, which I really needed to hold all of the post race goodies they gave me, which also happened to be in front of the Bellagio so I stayed there for a bit to enjoy my beer, take a post race picture with my medal and watch the water show before heading back to my hotel.

                  

And I took this picture on my walk back to the hotel of the strip being completely empty. It looks so much smaller this way.

World of Color- Winter Dreams

I know I usually do Foodie Friday on Fridays, but since I am road trippin’ to Las Vegas today, and I got a chance to attend the World of Color – Winter Dreams Media event at Disney’s California Adventure last night so I am going to post about that instead. Okay?

This is the meet up that almost didn’t happen. I have driven to Disneyland from my mom’s house a few dozen times and I knew it was about an hour and a half drive; 2 hours at the most. Well this is me 3 hours later . . .



Yeah, not a happy Summer, and don’t worry we weren’t going anywhere when this was taken.
We were allowed to start checking in at 3, and had to be checked in by 6:30. We ended up pulling into the Mickey & Friends parking lot at about 6:10. We made a mad dash to the pick up location and were greeted with these signs.

     

Phewww. We made it just in time because right after we got checked in they were starting to give the “no show” spots away.

After we received our wristbands and tickets we were advised that we should go directly to the Grizzly River Run FastPass location as they started lining up between 6:30- 7, so into the park we headed. As we made our way back we noticed that the line was already backed up to SOARIN’. We also noticed that SOARIN’ only had a 15 minute wait so we decided to go on a ride real quick, instead of hopping in line. Here we are in line for SOARIN’ celebrating our success



After the ride the line was moving so we decided we better get in it. The line was really long, but as we made our way to Paradise Pier I got really excited to see they were handing out these beauties to everyone.



Success!! We scored ourselves 4 pair of Glow with the Show ears!! And they will be going back with us in a couple of weeks when we hit Disneyland for a birthday celebration!!

The viewing area was quite full by the time we made our way in, but a very kind cast member told us that there will be more room on the right hand side, so we made our way over there and lucked into a rail side spot on the second tier, just in front of the media risers. Score!!

After a brief introduction by Steven Davison, a Disney Imagineer, and a guest appearance by Josh Gad, the voice behind the movie Frozen’s Olaf, it was time for the show!!

Winter dreams opens with a virtual choir and videos of the members singing were played in snowflakes on the water screen. Many of our Disney favorites make appearances in winter themed scenes as well. These include Bambi and his woodland friends, Santa Mater, our favorite toys preforming the nutcracker (watch for Rex in a tutu) and my personal favorite . . .



The show is hosted by Olaf, the snowman from Frozen, and I have to say he is a ball of fun!! Or should I say 3 balls of fun?? He even sings about his desire to experience summer for the first time.



One of my favorite parts of the show is the sing-a-long, in which Olaf tells you to follow his bouncing butt . . .



The sing-a-long has a little something for everyone, featuring Jingle Bells, I Have a Little Dreidel, and Feliz Navidad.

All in all I have to say we all loved the show and the Glow with the Show ears were a huge hit as well. I am always amazed at the way Disney can get grown adults giggling like children, and that is exactly what I heard all around me as our ears flickered and changed colors with the show!! It truly adds an extra level of magic to the experience, for sure!!



If you are heading to the Disneyland Resort this holiday season I highly recommend you take the time to watch World of Color- Winter Dreams!! You won’t regret it!