BL's Visit and Disneyland!

For my Birthday present I decided that what would make me happiest (and was actually attainable) would be to have my sister in law BL come visit me. So several months in advance my brother and I started scheming to make it possible. She basically had no choice in the matter! ;-) This required a lot from her - flying across the country alone...something she'd never done before. But I think it was totally worth it, wasn't it BL??



Unfortunately we had a lot of the "May Grey" going on so there weren't any fantastic California beach days, despite it being sunny at my house the whole week!

I drove her by the "Top Gun" house that's in Oceanside. Sadly it's all boarded up and I think it's supposed to be moved or knocked down. Who would want to get rid of that house?? I mean, it's nothing grand but it was still a part of a very famous movie.

Gardens at Stone Brewery for my Birthday lunch with S.

BL had never really had sushi before so for her last dinner out here with me we went to one of my favorite sushi places and got a couple rolls...yes, I know it was very bad for two pregnant women BUT I was super safe with what I ordered AND one of them is tempura. O:-) Most importantly, she really liked it!

Okay so I was trying to plan for us to go see a taping of "America's Got Talent" but unfortunately that fell through. So on the spur of the moment I decided that despite BL and I both being pregnant we should go to Disneyland. This year the Disney parks are having free admission on your birthday so I registered and got my "free" ticket and then went to ITT to pick up BL's ticket. Perfecto, two for the price of one basically! I figured, even if we can't go on the "big" rides, there are plenty of smaller rides and neither of us has ever been to DisneyLAND and if BL is able to make it out to Cali again, it'll be with my brother and the kiddos and Disneyland would be a completely different kind of experience for her (and for me, since I'd have a kiddo too!) So we went...and it was fantastic fun!!

Sleeping Beauty's castle is incredibly smaller than Cinderella's in DisneyWorld...I thought she should complain to Walt.

A note from Mickey thanking me for Celebrating with him, how sweet!

We totally lucked out and happened to enter the park just as Mickey was parading down Main Street USA! Of all the times going to DisneyWorld we used to try so hard to get a picture of him waving at us and here, it wasn't an issue at all!

We went on just about every "small" ride the park had. But there was one in particular I absolutely couldn't miss, not for all the swelling or braxton hicks contractions in the world!

It's a Small World!

It was far more extravagant than DisneyWorld's version (about one of the only things that was) and I loved every second of hearing that song over and over and over and over and over and over again!! :-)

I think as a whole it was a pretty relaxed week with BL. Other than DisneyLand, my shower and a party, we just hung out: went shopping, saw a movie and just caught up on a bunch of talking. Part of what I miss most about being so far away from my family is being able to just hang out. I'm glad BL made the trip out here and that my bro was able to work everything out with some of his awesome friends to help with the girls. It really made my Birthday "week" a fabulous one considering D is gone.

I can't wait until we're able to see eachother again since we'll both have new additions to our families!