About in Disneyland AGAIN! (Day 3)

This day was Carolina's actual birthday! The parks opened later this day - so we had time for her to open some Disney presents and stop by the Downtown Disney Starbucks - which is a really cool store - and made some dang good coffee. 

The final day in Disneyland... always bittersweet.. but this time it started out more bitter... long story short - they screwed us over and only partially fixed the problem. After some tears (mine and Liam's), and an upswing in things - the day was saved. Mickey was the first one to help things make a change for the better.

The second change in luck (if you want to call it that) - was that our FANTASTIC friends had gone ahead to get tickets so Carolina could meet Anna and Elsa. It's another long story, and a negative one, so I'll skip to the happy ending. This is it:

The look on Carolina's precious little face just put me over the edge - it might be her best birthday, for me anyway.

The boys got lucky when they went on Space Mountain, and it broke down! Not only did they get to see it with lights on, but they got to ride it with lights on, and then ride it AGAIN with lights off... lucky suckers.

It was blazing hot this day - 99 degrees! I wasn't wearing any stinking poncho this time, I wanted to get soaked. This picture doesn't show it well - but Liam's face was definitely showing some terror... not quite like this picture from last year though :)

Add caption

 We decided just the thing for the heat was a Dole Whip and some Tiki Room Action - it was the perfect choice!

 Carolina made a friend...

Still too hot, so we decided on an iced coffee and a train ride around the park... it was a hot ride.

I don't remember, but I think we switched parks at this point and came back after a while...

We are mean parents who used our children's nap to sneak in some fabulous baked 

treats from Jolly Holiday bakery - this s'mores cake/fudge/thing had my name all over it. Todd got a beautiful Mickey shaped raspberry rose macaron - which my phone failed to take a picture of. And we picked up a piece of birthday for Carolina.

Terrible pics - since it was getting dark, but after some dinner, we pulled out the piece of (super delicious) chocolate cake, stuck 3 candles in it, and sang her a little happy birthday song. It wasn't fancy, or over the top, but it felt pretty perfect.

The park was open a little later, because it had opened later I assume, and so we had more after dark hours - which was great because a) it finally was cooling down, and b) everything gets so much more magical after night! But The evening of the last day always triggers a frantic, stressed feeling, I start to get crazy about what I feel like I need to do before my time is up. I think it helped to be with friends who were more chill and had a different perspective. I decided to let it go (yes, I meant that) and go with the flow... I ended up spending a good chunk of the evening with Carolina, with others trying to get on those bigger rides... but again, this is what it was all about for me, spending this time with my kids and really just soaking it up and enjoying it with them. We rode the carousel, went to see the Halloween Tree, and soaked up some park

We got to ride on Big Thunder Mtn Railroad one last time and then jump in line right before 9:00 - for our one and only ride on Peter Pan's Flight... the line was/is always so long, but it was now or never, and it was 30 well spent minutes since they were all after the park had officially closed!

 Walking out of Disneyland is the saddest thing - I hate doing it, I really do - so much happiness and wonderfulness we are leaving...

But then there was this :) 

This was SUCH a fun trip - the kids are just at the perfect age for the magic. They were so well behaved, so patient, honestly they impressed me. By the 3rd day, you could see them starting to unravel, so a fourth day might have been slightly less fun... but I'd be willing to test that theory ;)