Casey's birthday trip

We went on our last birthday Disneyland trip on the 8th to celebrate Casey turning 9. I had to start with this picture he took of Chad's ipod since that is how our trip started. He listened to this practically the whole way there. It was fun to listen to him sing along while we tried to figure out what song he was "singing". I can't tell you haw many times we heard his favorite, Weird Al Yackovich's "White and Nerdy".


I do have to admit I was a little frightened to take this trip because in the days leading up to it he was starting to sound like a dictator as it became apparent that he understood the rule about the birthday child leading the day much better his siblings did. He settled down though and we had lots of fun. Here he is in line for Indiana Jones. The cast member at the beginning of the line handed him this and asked him to give it the person when he got to front. I asked what it was and they told us it was to help gage the length of time in line. Chad rolled his eyes at me, but I have never seen this so I had to of course document it :)

Here he is dutifully handing over the lanyard and completing his very important job.

Jungle cruise

Here he is riding by himself on Big Thunder Rail road. He felt quite grown up to be able to ride without Chad and I.

Here is the best one I could get of him on the ride.

We have never taken our kids on Space Mt. He was very excited to be getting to ride a ride that none of the other kids had done yet.

A picture of the picture of us on Space Mt.

Of course we had to do Autotopia. He was almost tall enough to ride this one on his own, but those pesky gas pedals are just a bit out of his reach. Maybe next time.

He didn't want to get his picture with Mickey, but I told we had done it with the other kids and this was the one thing had to do even though he was in charge. It was a very short line and we accomplished it quickly.

Birthday cake picture of the birthday boy.
We had such success in the morning that by noon we had gone on all the rides in Disneyland that he had on his list. What to do for the next 12 hours!!! We decided to spend the extra $25.00 and upgrade his ticket to California adventure too.

One of main reasons was that he kept talking about how he was going to go on the upside down roller coaster this time and we kept reminding him that that ride was not in the park we were going to. So we of course headed straight for California Screaming so that he could conquer the ride he had been to scared of back in Oct.

He loved it and gave it a big thumbs up! He even went on it again later and even kept his eyes open for the loopty loop. Daddy was brave and went on it the first time, but chose to decline the second ride. another pic of a pic, you can hardly see him in the bottom left corner, but he is there.

He enjoyed the artist section of in CA Adventure

in a survey he discovered the Disney character he is most like is Lumiere.
He tried his hand at drawing his own bit of animation. Note to my mom, notice the tongue sticking out as he concentrates.
Looking buggy in his Honorary bug glasses as we went in to watch "it's tough to be a bug"

Again riding on his own In Monsters Inc.

He spent a bit of his money in the candy shop. Here he is making his own pixie stick in a sand art esque form.

Something else he got with his birthday money was this skull he was so pleased to find.
He loved it so much because when you squeezed it, out popped all sorts of body parts like noses, ears, bones and blood.

Like brother, trying his had at the shooting gallery.

I think because of the name alone we had to go on the Casey Jr. train.

We were able to get a lot of rides that we did in the afternoon thanks to the single rider line. This is where you take the chance of riding with strangers, but you get on fast by filling in space where there is an uneven number of riders. We always had one of go before Casey and one of us after him so that he was never standing without one of us. Casey quickly caught on to the fact we could eat lots of snacks and we were not to say no to often. I think we ate more on this trip than any of the others. We got to the park for 8:am opening and left at 11:30 pm. Daddy even went back to the hotel room for a quick nap in the evening. Here is the birthday boy wiped out after one long day at Disneyland.

In Disneyland we went on

• Splash Mt.


• Haunted Mansion


• Pirates of the Caribbean


• Jungle cruise 2 times


• Thunder Mt.


• Buzz light year Astro blasters


• Space Mt.


• Autotopia


• Tarzan's Tree House


• Matterhorn Mt.


• Gadget's go coaster


• Roger Rabbits Cartoon spin


• Casey Jr Train

In California adventure we went on

• Toy story midway 2 times


• CA Screaming 2 times


• Soaring over Ca


• Monsters inc.


• Grizzly river run 4 times

We saw

• It's tough to be a bug


• Fantazmic


• half of the fire work show


• Mickey Mouse
  I love Fantazmic and we excited to see it back. There were a few changes and sadly to me they were noticeable, but the people around me who I gotten to visit with for the 2 hours that i waited for the show to start really enjoyed it and thought it was as exciting as i had built it up to be. Yes we did wait for 2 hours. That is what is OK to do when you had such success in the morning. While I held our space Casey kept running back and forth the Tarzan's tree house, he went through it about 10 times.