On our way first day in Disney

Keagan was way too excited!!! You can't tell by this pic on the airplane, but he was! He could not sit still! (I was the lucky one sitting by him...)

We had stayed up way too late (for getting up soo early) packing and then had to get up around 3:15 a.m. to go to the airport. (Thank-you Aunt Cindy for taking us!) Melissa and Brooklyn on the airplane. It was fun, we got to take Brooklyn w/ us the first few days before her mom could come for the performances.
Our hotel sign, it was fairly close to Disney, we walked across the street and down a block or two to get there. We got to our hotel and checked in around noon. I was tired already by then... we tried to talk the kids into a nap before we went to Disneyland.... but .... there was no budging on their part, especially Keagan.

Yeah!!
Disney Way!

We got a doctor's note to have a wheelchair in Disney for Melissa because of her mono. We borrowed the one mom had for Grandma Bilow. I'm soo glad we had it, Melissa would of never of made it w/ out it.

It came in very handy...

* a place to sit when the kids where getting their pictures taken

* a place to put all of our "stuff"

* front of the line!

* a ride for Melissa, Brooklyn, Keagan, and once Sandy pushed me around in it.

Here Ray is "resting" in it.

The front entrance, we had Melissa and Brooklyn in the wheelchair.

That first day we did soo many things, we went to Space tours, Space Mountain (I think one of our favorites), the Haunted Mansion (which was soo cool decorated for the Holidays)

The submarine ride, which almost put us to sleep with all that gentle rocking...
And of course the Matterhorn! This used to be my favorite ride when I was a teenager. When I was younger we used to come to Disneyland almost every spring break (after my parents got their tax return back) We camped along the way (YUK! That is where I prob. got my hating of camping) But we had fun at Disney.

I think it was funner when I was younger, I don't remember it being soo jarring.. lol I guess I am getting older.

We went on the monorail, then the train- to get to the closest main street station so we could go back to the hotel. We were hungry and tired!!! You can tell how wiped we were! The kids chose and we went to McDonalds that night for dinner, and I told them, we need to stay awake a little longer so we aren't up so early the next day... Keagan, Ray, and Melissa made it up until 7:00 p.m. and Brooklyn and I stayed up to a grand old 7:30! We all slept 12 hours that night and Brooklyn and Melissa slept in until 8:45 ish!

one more.... (maybe)

This is the same as on smilebox from a couple of posts ago... but it is easier to play it from this

Melissa's dance performances at disneyland

This is the first dance they did at the CA adventure park on Saturday November 8th.
I uploaded it to youtube, it took too long on blogger... or I'm to impatient.



This one is the 2nd dance Melissa's group did and this one is at Disneyland on Monday November 10th. My camera battery died.... so most of it is on there. We had some technical difficulties.... our other camera was the camera we planned on video taping everything, but there was soo much background noise on it and this newer one worked soo much better to video.

corbin bleu/ryan seacrest at disneyland

Saturday after the girls performed in CA adventure, we went over to Disneyland. We had heard that the Jonas brothers were there and they might be performing later that day. When we walked into the park, it was crazy you couldn't hardly move. We got there just in time to hear Corbin Bleu perform for the Disney Christmas special. I had to keep asking Melissa "who did we see perform?" For those of you like me who says, huh, who? Corbin Bleu is the guy w/ the afro who plays in the High school Musical movies (I have only seen the first one) Ryan Seacrest interviews him, and we got to meet him and shake his hand.... quite by accident, we were standing by the ropes after the perfomance and saying to each other, what should we do now... and all of the sudden Ryan Seacrest is standing near us, and then we shook his hand and got our pics taken, Sandy has the one of all of us w/ him, I'll post later. Who is Ryan Seacrest? I knew him because as a child I loved Dick Clarks new years eve special and after Dick Clark was sick, Ryan Seacrest took over for him, but he also hosts American Idol. He really is short!

The funniest thing about this whole thing to me was Melissa said she didn't really care about seeing him, since she doesn't really care about High school musical, but when we got there and saw him performing she became a teenage groupie, yelling a screaming.... pretty funny!!!

So now you can watch the Disney Christmas special and say you saw it here first.... I know you can hardly wait.... ;)

This first video is mine where I'm trying to get Corbin Bleu into focus, I kept having too many people in front of me and every time I moved the camera it had to re-focus. This was take 3... in case you were wondering. :)



This video I found on you tube, if the video was just a few minutes longer, we would be on it, we are just to the right of where the person is video taping and saw all of this happening, you can hear Ray at the very beginning of it make a laughing noise when Ryan asks which one is your wife.

Melissa and Brooklyn are standing on a fence or bench w/ Ray holding onto them so they don't fall so they could see. I couldn't see the dancers, but I could get good "pockets" from time to time seeing, Corbin. (Melissa has the black shirt on, Brooklyn the pink)

Fantasmic at Disneyland

One of the fun things we got to do at Disneyland was go see the show "Fantasmic" It was really great! We were close enough to see everything and get wet (a little) and feel the warmth of the fire when it was on the water. The only problem was I didn't know when I should video tape for the really good parts because I had never seen it before. Here are 3 parts that we thought turned out well on the camera.

The first is the beginning of the show.



This one is towards the end it has the boad come thru w/ all of the Disney characters in it.



This is what I got of the finale

These are pictures of their perfomances on Sat. at CA adventure. It was a really cool stage that was called the Hollywood back lot stage. There was really cool banners in the background of the princesses. I know Sandy got some cool pics of them close up.

This is the adult class dancing to the redneck song. It is the funniest! Lynda is one of the funnest performers to watch, I got a great one of just her. This is the class just younger than Melissa. They did a great job!! The little girls are soo cute now matter what they do! Melissa, Emily, and Brooklyn. This is the sign at Ca. adventure.

I thought since this Disney trip was all about Melissa coming to dance I should post dance video and pictures first. I'm sure there will be a lot more blogs about Disney. We were there 5 days and took almost 300 pics. (Don't worry, I won't post them all.... at least all at once) The video took FOREVER to load, so I'll just do one for now, I'll have to figure something else out... and the first time I posted... it didn't post. ok plan b, it has been uploading now for 1/2 hour and still hasn't posted, so I'm trying smilebox....

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We're home!

Boy, Melissa is fast in posting a blog!
We are home and safe, had a great time! But I am ready to sleep in my own bed tonight!
I did the most important thing this afternoon already... took a nap. Now I have checked e-mails, checked the bank account (not too scary.... but not wonderful either) and now I need to go make a real meal for dinner. I haven't even uploaded our pics yet. I'm sure lots more to come on the Disney trip!
I know Keagan is a true Washatonian (sp? - Les) The weather was warm and sunny, when we got off the airplane today at Seatac Keagan said, "ahh this feels nice" :)