The Happiest Place on Earth - Olivia's 3rd Birthday

For Olivia's 3rd birthday, we decided awhile back that we would try to meet up with her BFF Kendall somewhere in California.  At first, we thought about going to Sea World, but Sarah recommended Disneyland and I couldn't be happier that we chose to spend Olivia's 3rd birthday at the Happiest Place on Earth.  

We drove over to Anaheim on Monday {the day before her birthday} and checked into our hotel suite that was only a mile away from Disneyland.  We thought we were pretty smart finding a really nice {and cheap thanks to Hotwire} hotel room that had two rooms - one for us and one for the girls.  Boy, were we ever wrong!  Even though Olivia didn't nap on the ride out, she was way too keyed up to go to bed on her own.  So, poor David {or, actually lucky David} ended up sleeping in the other room while I slept with both girls in the big bed.  We did manage to get some sleep, thankfully, because we were up and at 'em early the next morning.

{This is the special Minnie Mouse dress Olivia wore to Disneyland the first day.}

We headed over to Disneyland on Olivia's birthday and met up with Kendall, her mom Sarah, and baby sister Katelyn in the parking garage before heading in.  It was SO great seeing them.  I hadn't seen Katelyn since she was about a month old and Olivia was so excited to see Kendall.  I think Kendall was a little shocked to see Olivia because it took her a few minutes to warm up to her {even though Sarah said she talked about Olivia the entire ride to Disneyland}.  After that, they were right back to instant buddies.  

Since Olivia is obsessed with Dumbo, we decided to head straight to the Dumbo ride first.  She was so excited for the ride!

The magic feather!

After Dumbo, we got right on the Snow White ride.  Holy Mercy - that is not a ride for toddlers.  Fortunately for us, by the time we were finished with it,  Mickey's Toontown had opened up.  This is where Mickey and all of his friends live and we were hoping to at least meet Minnie and Mickey and get the visions of witches out of our kiddos eyes.  And, whoop whoop, we did!

Love these girls

She was over the moon meeting Minnie!  And, she loved touring her house.

Mickey's line was kind of long and I have to admit I was a little disappointed that it was the Fantasia Mickey Mouse, especially since Olivia had never seen that.  But, she was thrilled anyway.

While in Toontown, we toured Donald's boat and Goofy's Playhouse and were lucky enough to meet Pluto roaming around.

Please note that Pluto only has three "fingers" - and so when he showed Olivia that she was three, he showed his whole paw.  This had the biggest impact on her and she ended up telling this story to just about everyone she came into contact with.

Sarah's sister lives in L.A. and has a season pass to Disneyland.  She brought her triplets {yeah, you read that right} to join us for the fun day.  Once we met up with her, we headed over to ride It's A Small World and found a spot to have lunch.

I made little goodie bags for the kids with Disney stickers, Disney fruit snacks and a cd with lots of Disney songs on it and it seems that the fruit snacks were a HIT.

We ended up riding the train around and touring Princess Aurora's castle and somehow running into the Fairy Godmother.

David was so great at spotting one of the characters roaming around and hightailing it to where they were so we could get a little Meet & Greet.

Friends in a teacup.

While I fed Sydney, David and the other ladies entertained the girls with the carousel.  We then headed off to check out the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, the Winnie the Pooh ride, the Jungle Cruise and then the Finding Nemo submarine voyage.  We were really lucky that we barely had to wait in line for any of these rides.  The longest was the submarine ride and that was probably only about a 15 minute wait! We picked the perfect time to go!

After the Nemo ride, it was time for Sarah and her girls to head out.  We had such a great time hanging out with them - we miss them SO much and we feel really blessed that they drove down to celebrate Olivia's 3rd birthday with us.  Such good friends...

Saying goodbye...for now.

We decided that we weren't quite ready to call it a day yet.  We headed up to the Main Street area and found ourselves a nice spot for the parade.  We had a little bit of time before the parade started, so we stopped into City Hall and picked up a birthday button for Olivia.  {She also got to see Pluto again!}

The parade was amazing.  Olivia was super excited to see all of the characters and the princesses.  She would call out to them and say things like, "Hi Minnie!  I was at your house today!"  It was so stinking cute. David and I looked at each other at least 20 times and said, "This is SO worth it!"  The genie from Aladdin came right up to her and about scared the daylights out of her, but she loved everything else.  The highlight had to be when the princess caravan came around and Cinderella saw her birthday button and mouthed "Happy Birthday" to her.  She was in HEAVEN.

Would you look at that face?  Blowing Cinderella a kiss.

SO precious.

After the parade, we decided to take a little stroll around Fantasyland again and do one more Dumbo ride before calling it a night.  We were all exhausted, but had permagrins on each of our faces.  We had the BEST time celebrating Olivia's birthday at Disneyland.  {We love you so much, beautiful girl!}

I literally took 850 pictures on my camera and cell phone.  David took another 100.  I have spent just about every spare minute editing the photos and putting them into a separate file to make a photo book of our trip. I got it down to about 250 favorites.  {Ridiculous, I know} I'll be back {hopefully} tomorrow with details from the 2nd day of our Disneyland trip.  {I know you guys are so anxious!} 

To Be Continued...