Our first blessing came 5 days before my 14 year old son, Ben and I got on the plane to Disneyland. My husband, Jack, found out that he could come with us. He was the main reason for this gathering of friends in the first place. He has recently returned from 15 months in Iraq and my loving and supportive friends wanted to meet him. This was also going to be Jack's first ever trip to Disneyland. I giggled non-stop as I was able to get him a ticket with airline miles and he even flew down on the same flight with us!!!

Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005: Day one was pretty uneventful. We spent the majority of the day getting to Santa Ana. We then went out to dinner with 2 of our dearest friends, one even flew in from N. Carolina to spend time with us!! We went out to Taco Mexico in Santa Ana. It's an authentic taco stand and the food is YUMMMY! We visited for quite a while before going to our hotel.

Thursday Oct. 20, 2005. Day two. We met up with a few of our friends for breakfast and then went off to Disneyland to get our Annual Passes. I'm now an APer! Wee haw…watch out!

We got Jack on his first Disneyland ride: The Pirates of the Caribbean. We rode on a number of rides before our group swelled to 17 for lunch at the Blue Bayou. The rest of the day was spent hanging out with wonderful friends and getting on so many rides that Jack was on over load. He did make the comment that Disneyland seems to be the kind of place where you build and relive wonderful memories. This was Jack's year for building his first memories.

Friday, Oct 21, 2005. Day three. This morning we took off with a few friends and went to the Santa Ana Zoo. This is a small zoo filled with lots of varieties of monkeys. Ben particularly liked the smallest species of monkey and kept sneaking off to watch them. We got a VIP tour with one of the zookeepers. He is one of our friends. We had a wonderful time.

After the zoo, our little group then went off to the beach to look at the ocean, watch the surf and surfers and take some photos. We had lunch at the end of along pier at a place called Ruby's. Best milk shake I've ever had!!! Jack especially enjoyed watching the men fish off the pier.

We then met up with a bunch of our friends at the Grand Californian hotel. We partied in one of the hotel rooms overlooking the inner courtyard and monorail track. Our friends decorated for Halloween and had quite the food spread waiting for us. We took a Disneyland trivia test that one of our friends made up. I'm surprised I did as well as I did on it. Of course, we all laughed a lot. We then all headed over to Disneyland to park ourselves right smack dab in front of the castle for the fireworks. Jack said the last time he's waited for 2 hours for anything was when the Empire Strikes Back first came out. We all visited and had a wonderful time. I'm not sure how many of us there were. Certainly 15 or more. It was so wonderful to share this with our friends. I got choked up a few times. That's the best fireworks show ever! They are amazing and must been seen at least once from the hub by the castle. When the flames shot out for the Indiana Jones portion of the show, we felt the heat! Wow! That's how close we sat. Tinkerbell was fun to see flying again! It's been a long time since I've seen her fly over the castle.

After the fireworks, many of our friends went on to ride more rides but Jack, Ben and I went to our hotel room to recover for the next day.

Saturday, Oct. 22, 2005. Day four. Jack, Ben and I had a hard time getting up this morning so we totally missed breakfast with several of our friends and had cereal in our room instead. But we were at Disneyland with bells on for our 8am morning meet with our friend who is a Disney Imagineer. This was about the most wonderful part of our entire trip. Our friend took us to several attractions including a few he has helped design. He pointed things out to us we never would have noticed. This friend was one of the designers for the new Space Mountain. All I can say is WOW! What an amazing ride!!!!

Our group swelled to over 20 this day and once a cast member asked if we were meeting for a family reunion. It was fun to tell him that we were family by choice. These friends are so dear to me. They ARE my family! We had the best time together.

We watched the Block Party Bash this day. I loved it. One of our friends even got out there and danced with Sully from Monsters Inc. and the Green Army Men. I took lots of pictures!! We also ate at my newest favorite eatery at the Disneyland Resort. This is the White Water Snacks in the Grand Californian Hotel. The food is great, the prices are good AND though the parks were pretty doggone crowded, this eatery was not. It's the best-kept secret at Disneyland!

Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005. Day five. This day began the good-byes…some were even tearful for me. It was sad to have to say good-bye to my dearest friends and Mr. Potato Head who spent most of the time with us. He was a slide show project for 2 of our friends in their classrooms back home. Mr. Potato Head had quite the vacation!!! I asked if they packed his angry eyes. They hadn't but they wished they had packed his sleepy eyes. He had such a busy time of it.

Billy Hill

On this day, a few of us took off to see Billy Hill and the Hillbillies while others went on rides. This was the best show I've ever seen them do. I'm quite the "Billy's" fan. We got the best seats in the house and were even included in part of the show. We all laughed so hard. Afterwards, Jack and I shook hands with the lead Billy. He thanked Jack for his service in Iraq. I can't wait to scrap that page!

Monday, Oct. 24, 2005. Day six. Most of our friends left for home to Utah and other parts of California either Sunday or early this morning so a handful of us carpooled to The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. I highly recommend this as a day trip on your next Disneyland visit. We took the behind the scenes tour and had the very best tour guide ever!!! Even Ben, who is 14 and tries to avoid anything educational, loved this aquarium. He got to help feed the archerfish and these are now my son's favorite fish on the planet. He even wants to do a research paper on them. GASP!!! Gigantic thanks go out to Pal Jasen for making this happen for us!

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005. Day seven. Amazing but true…we still had a few friends visiting with us and we spent the morning together at the parks going on our favorite rides. Jack, Ben and I then spent our first afternoon together…just the three of us. We spent most of our time at Disney's California Adventure. I love all the changes to the Animation building. Crush is fun and we got to learn how to draw Mickey! I even got pictures with Abby Mallard, AKA the Ugly Ducking. Too much fun!!! We also played in the Redwood Challenge Trail and went to just about every single attraction there. What a wonderful day!

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005. Day eight. This day we took off for Universal Studios near Hollywood. We had a wonderful time there. We particularly liked the Mummy and Jurassic Park rides as well as T-2 3-D which has to be the very best 3-D show I've ever seen. We also really enjoyed the Water world show. We had lunch with…you guessed it…some of our Dear Disney friends who live in the area. That was such a treat!

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005. Day nine. This morning we took off and did some much needed shopping and went to see a movie. One of our suitcases had torn open on the trip up and we needed to replace it. It was fun to wander around the shops in the California sun. At one point I called home and my 18 year old asked me how the weather was. It was in the low 70s in California. It was in the low 20s in Anchorage. OUCH! I was happy to be able to come home with a tan.

After the movie, we then took off for the parks and met up with some of our friends from the previous week as well as other friends who had just driven down for a long weekend. We had a wonderful time!!! Got to see the 50th parade. I love the theme song! "Welcome to our Family Time!" That totally went with our "family by choice" get together. I fell in love with a pair of 9-month-old twin girls. Oh my gosh! They were adorable. Its been a very long time since I've held someone so young and adorable! My 14 year old baby is taller than me now.

Friday, Oct. 28, 2005. Day ten. We spent part of this day shopping at the Main Street shops and hanging out with our friends and the twins. We went back to our hotel room early. We were relaxing on our beds (giving our feet a much needed rest) when we heard these loud BOOMS! I had no clue what was happening until I realized it was the fireworks from Disneyland. We stood on the balcony in our pajamas and watched the fireworks. It gave us a different perspective and I told Jack I wanted to be sure to see them the next day IN Disneyland.

Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005. Day eleven. We took off pretty early for San Diego and Sea World. I love Sea World and I wasn't disappointed this day either. We had a wonderful and relaxed day together. We enjoyed all the shows and exhibits. Jack thoroughly enjoyed it there.

We stayed at Sea World until the park closed at 6 and hustled back to Anaheim to see the fireworks again. This time we chose to view them from It's a Small World area. I'm so glad we did! This is now our favorite fireworks viewing spot. Again…you have to see them from Main Street at least once but Small World was fabulous. Not only is it less crowded there but it was like the fireworks are exploding right over our heads. They also project cool stuff on the Small World building. This is certainly a must see.

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005. Day twelve. We met up with our friends again this morning and spent much of the day with them. I got to hold one of the twins in order toget pictures with Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger. This trip was the hardest at getting photos with characters I've ever experienced. Part of it was that parks were so crowded for this time of the year. Everyone on the planet wants to be at the ORIGINAL Disney Park for its 50thAnniversary. I guess I can't blame them for that. Everything was so special! Also, I didn't want to stand in line when I could be off playing with friends.

I also got soaked twice this day. First on Grizzly River Run, a giant wave came over the raft completely drenching a young 4 year old and his dad. The look on his face was priceless!!! I was on the boy's other side and got it good, too. It took most of the day but I finally dried off. Then, later in the day as the sun was setting, I went on Splash with some friends and got soaked again. We had to head over to Tomorrowland to ride Space Mountain again. Gotta love that ride!!!! Our last ride of the vacation was Buzz Lightyear. I think I rode that one more than any other attraction this trip. It is now right up there with my favorite rides. I pretty much stink at scoring big but I do really enjoy it just the same. We went back to the hotel at about 6:30 that evening to bathe, pack and get ready for our flight home. I quite honestly cried as I said good-bye to each of the lands and parks as we sloshed thru Disneyland, the Esplanade and down Harbor Blvd to our hotel. We had such a wonderful time! I'm already planning to meet up with my family of friends at Disneyland again in the spring.

Monday, Oct. 31, 2005. Day thirteen. Our final magical blessing happened at the airport. Jack was scheduled to fly home 4 hours after us. We all got on the same flight and even got to sit in the same row for the flight to Seattle. I was able to take some great photos from the air of Yosemite, Half Dome and Lake Tahoe. Our vacation was wonderful but a little long. We were happy to arrive back in Anchorage. I stood outside in the crisp cold air without a coat enjoying the coolness. It is good to be home. Now I get to scrapbook my trip! Gotta love that!