California Vacation! Part 1!

We have been planning a trip back to Disneyland ever since the start of the year when we did our Disney Give a Day Get a Day service project. We decided that the best time to go would be when the crowds are low. We had an extremely busy summer and so we decided to wait until school was in session and pull the kids out. We have been working with their teachers since the start of the school year so that they don't get too behind. The person we were most concerned about was Nathan (being his first year in Jr. high) but I think he will be all caught up by the end of next week.

So we left as soon as school was over on Tuesday, Sept 28. We even got out pretty much right on schedule! We drove down to Vegas (although at St. George we felt pretty shot and might stop there the next time if we break the trip up and leave at the same time.) We rolled into Vegas at about 10pm and checked into the Excalibur hotel. Our beds were NOT comfortable, but we did sleep...and it was nice to stop for the night.

The next morning we were on the road to California by 9am and it wasn't much longer til we got to our destination! We stayed at the Peacock Suites which is about 1.5 miles from Disneyland. My friend, Crystal, who I met at EVO and has a travel blog helped me find this hotel for an amazing rate through Expedia. She was such a help and we saved so much money on this trip thanks to her help with our Vegas and Anaheim hotels! Thanks Crystal! You're Awesome! We were happy with the hotel. It had a microwave,mini fridge, plates, cups and silverware. It took us about 15 minutes to walk down to Disneyland which wasn't bad for this particular trip. There was a shuttle as well, but we opted not to pay for it (I honestly don't even know how much it cost!) I would definitely stay there again especially for the great rate, but really I think I'd like to opt for the Grand Californian next time (dreamin' big...).

Once we got to the hotel we took a little quiet time and had the kids work on their homework (nice vacation, huh? We still make our kids do school work!) And then we walked to Downtown Disney and perused the shops there. Some new ones had opened since the last time we went and we enjoyed some of the favorites like World of Disney and The LEGO Store. Last time we didn't get to spend much time in Build-A-Bear--this one has so much MORE than ours at home! We loved it!


We went to House of Blues for dinner. In my continued attempts to keep this trip as inexpensive as possible, I had picked up a $50 gift certificate from Restaurant.com for only $6!!!! So that helped out the final cost tremendously! All the food there was so delicious! The kids are in love with gumbo since they tried it at the Blue Bayou (the restaurant in the Pirates of the Carribean ride) last year and the House of Blues had an amazing Gumbo too! I found a recipe for the Blue Bayou Gumbo and am going to try it out this week. I hope I do it right! We had a great waitress there too. She kept spilling water, but was so good natured and had such a great sense of humor, we let it slide :)