Off to Lotus Land!

Here's the list:  My family and I went to California for the week of New Year's!  We have been planning this trip for over a year, and it was a once in a lifetime experience.  Now that I'm sitting down to write this post, I realize that there's too much to tell and show for one post.  I'll be splitting the trip up into several installments, so please bear with me!

Here's a little background:

My little sister, Dana, attends the University of Massachusetts out in Amherst and has been a member of the marching band for the past two years.  Every 3 years or so, the Marching Band does a big event.  Three years ago they marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; this year they were going to march in the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, CA on New Year's Day!

My family and I knew immediately that we had to go with them, to witness such an amazing feat.  We started planning our trip in fall of 2016, when my sister was just a freshman.  It was an exhausting  year, mostly for my mom who was doing most of the organizing for us.  It felt as though we had been counting down forever, yet the year zoomed by and before we knew it, we were packing!

We pretty much flew past Christmas and focused all of our attention on prepping for our trip.  We left for California on the morning of the 27th and were there until January 3rd.  Craziness!  It was a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget.

Most of our technical first day in CA was spent flying, trying to get our rental car we reserved, etc.

That's my mom and my stepdad driving.  It was -12 back home and it was 85 degrees in California!  We stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel for the first three days.  It was a short walk to Downtown Disney and from there, it connects to Disneyland and California Adventure.  From our room, we could see the back of California Adventure.  We watched the fireworks from our room and we heard people screaming on the roller coaster into the night.  It was convenient to be so close and I highly recommend you stay on Disney property if you can afford it.

After we dropped off our stuff and got settled, we decided to take a stroll into Downtown Disney.  It's much more spread out and less chaotic than the one in Florida, which recently added a bunch of store like Zara, bars, pubs and bowling alleys.  All of the Christmas decorations were still up everywhere; the festive decor only added to the magic of it all.

We got to see a seven foot tall gingerbread house in one of the other Disney hotels.  Disney never does anything small.  We didn't have much to do once we ate dinner so we decided to watch The Last Jedi.  To be honest, I fell asleep about two thirds of the way through -- I had already seen it with Bobby so I didn't miss anything luckily.

Stay tuned for the next post all about our day at CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE.