We arrived in Anaheim late afternoon, and decided to walk over to Downtown Disney, which is right outside the parks. It's a neat area, similar to the one in Florida, but a bit smaller. We enjoyed the Christmas decorations, got our little taste of "Gee-key" (Mickey, a la Lia), and had some dinner.
Lia, who now obviously takes right after her mama, had to "feel" every bin of lego pieces...
And this is what happened if we, or they, ventured near...
Look at this face! Like, you're not thinking of coming over here, are you?
The breakfast was neat, with Mickey shaped waffles and pancakes.
The first park we hit was Disneyland itself. It did make you feel very Christmasy with many decorations, and music all over. This is the entrance, with Mickey made out of flowers.
Characters were all over - Mary Poppins here.
Lia, konked out after an emotional morning not wanting to be pushed in the stroller for the long walk to the park, and then the big character breakfast...we stood in line to get Bill some water to take some cold medicine (poor guy suffered through an awful cold - still is! - the whole time we were there), and this lady says to me "it's pretty bad when you're KO at 10:30 in the morning (referring to Lia)" and I told her, well, you didn't see her morning!
So then, we tried a few rides, and the girls loved them! Here's daddy on the train with both of them (after mommy already did it twice!). It took them a while to understand that just because we had to get off, didn't mean we couldn't find another ride. They just wanted to ride the same ride again.
Of course, the carousel was a big hit. I think we could have stayed on it all day.
We really lucked out many times, running into shows, or parades. This one, was for the new movie, Princess and the Frog, and was in the New Orlean's area. 
( This is where we ended up having Christmas dinner.)
This next little set are the pictures taken by Ellie on her new camera. We had fun at the end of the day, ater the girls were in bed, looking at the pictures she had taken that day. Some of the ones really show how things look from her perspective. Bill says he thinks she has a knack - he loves the ones she took of the different patterns of ground, especially since she obviously took them deliberately. It was funny to see people's reactions to this little girl, standing there legs spread, taking a shot.
On Christmas day, we caught the parade, though we had to scramble a bit for a spot to view it. (We got much better at that the next day, to see the Pixar parade). Ellie and I squeezed into a spot a little away from Bill, who stayed with the strollers, and a sleeping Lia.
It was incredibly busy that day in the park, and we didn't even end up riding anything at all. We were grateful we had the day before, which was not so busy. The girls both konked out at one point, and we sat down with them, only to find that New Orlean's parade coming through right in front of us! We had to laugh at the tired little girls who slept through the whole thing, including the trumpets and drums, not two feet from them! (We got to be quite familiar with that performance - by the end of our visit, and one more time chancing upon it, we could have stepped in and joined in!)
This was our Christmas dinner, at the New Orlean's Cafe, where we had seen a special on TV before coming about their crepes and beignets. We had a nice time, and it was really yummy!
Ellie had been asking about cotton candy, and so we thought since it was Christmas...
This castle, which didn't impress me too much when we arrived during the day, astonished me when we turned a corner that night, and saw it all lit up. Oh my gosh was it beautiful! I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
Boxing Day's adventure was in California Adventure, their new park right beside Disneyland. It was a great day, not busy, and boy did we luck out in hitting all kinds of shows and parades by chance. This is the girls at the entrance...
As we walked in, the Playhouse Disney show was just letting everyone in, and the girls were just fascinated. It was neat, because it essentially was the Disney channel, with all the familiar characters, in real life. Lia couldn't take her eyes off of them all.
Then we went into the Bug's Life section, where they had a series of kiddie rides. They really liked that place.
This ladybug ride was like the tilt-a-whirl, kind of fast and spinning. It took me by surprise, and after it started, I was worried that they would be scared - ha! They were laughing like loons!
(No, mommy's not riding this one alone - though it looked like it since the girls were too short to see...)
It was a really neat park, and celebrated the state of California, and all of its variety, and beauty. Some areas were as pretty as real life would have been.
And yes, they had a carousel too.... (4 times in a row!) I told Bill that yes, the big "Hi Daddy!"s were cute, every time we went around the bend to see him, but even funnier was Ellie leaning back and yee-hawing, and waving her one hand around, in the interim.
So then, this was the Pixar parade that we happened upon. We saw some people starting to sit on the edge of the street, and having learned our lesson from the day before, we plunked down immediately. It was well worth it, and even the wait was fun, with our girls turned into little hams, with everyone watching them while they pranced around the open space. They started a trend, and eventually, a few other kids joined in. The moment that drew the most laughs was Lia trying to ride on her Minnie balloon.
The parade was really awesome, and perfect since it just started to get to get dark. It was very elaborate, and many of the characters were familiar to the girls, which was neat.
We waited the longest for this one - and only because Ellie had taken a particular liking to elephants on this trip. (Not worth it though!)
The details of everything there was what made it so interesting. In this treat shop, we saw caramel apples done up as snowmen, minnie and mickey pants, and honeypots. They were so cute.
In all, we had a wonderful time, and it was memorable Christmas together!
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