5.Versluys'.us

A big shout-out goes to Jenn, my friend from back when I was single and dressed up to go to work every day. She is the magic person who escorted our little group into Disneyland without any exorbitant amounts of money changing hands at the ticket booth.

I CAN’T BELIEVE I forgot to take a picture of us with Jenn… the documentation of our day is incomplete without her.

This is how we all felt all day:

I’ve been to Disneyland so many times in my life, but taking a preschooler to the Magic Kingdom for the first time takes the cake for best Disney experience. Hands down. I remember the feeling growing up as we watched my younger siblings have their own Disneyland first day, and it was fantastic on Friday to see my own daughter go nuts with Mickey Mouse.

She still doesn’t know all the Disney fairy tales (thanks to Mama’s unwillingness to buy the entire Disney collection because we’d go broke), but she does know Mickey very well. I know it’s just an hourly worker who goes home to a nearby apartment underneath that plastic head, but I think Mickey was taken by the laughs and giggles of his admirer:

Aunt Katie and Uncle James insisted on tagging along, even though we tried to sneak into the park before they showed up.

Aunt Katie pulled a classic White move, and after a long discourse on the scariness of the Snow White ride and how she was always petrified in the ride, she took Roma for a spin on Snow White’s Scary Adventures.

I thought it appropriate that sweet dear Aunt Katie was dressed in black that day, much like the evil stepmother. Although as far as we could tell, Roma survived with nary a sign of PTSD.

After Uncle James left for his job interview (congrats on getting the job, UJ!), we decided to hit up Winnie the Pooh, and the entire family hopped into a big honeycomb. It is definitely a cute family-friendly ride, and even 10 month old (tomorrow!) Quincy was able to survive the dark moments. She was a little creeped out by the Heffalumps and Woozles, but since her expression didn’t get much worse than this, I’ll assume she enjoyed it:

We went on the Jungle Cruise, of course, since there is nothing more hysterical than the canned jokes that accompany the plastic moving models of African Bull Elephants (so rare you don’t ever see more than one in your lifetime) at the end of a long day in the park.

Papa and Aunt Katie took the kids on the last ride of the day, the carousel. Unfortunately, Quincy is terribly attached to her Mama… and as soon as she was perched on her steed she noticed me outside the fence, and tried desperately to dismount.

But Aunt Katie kept a hold of her, and Q stuck it through the whole ride. She looked a little bewildered as her seat rose up and down, but seemed to get the hang of it.

And Roma, of course, enjoyed her jaunt on the carousel as only a 2 year old can.

Hopefully we’ll be able to visit Disneyland again sometime soon. The Southern California passes are incredibly tempting, but if Mama’s too cheap to drop $25 on a DVD, she’s definitely not springing for expensive pieces of paper any time soon – no matter how much Roma begs to go back and visit Mickey.