The day we got stuck in LA...

So, before we ever left on our vacation, we figured we would probably have one more day at Disneyland left on our tickets (we got the Southern California City Pass that had a 3 day park hopper pass in it already) so we had a few of our friends from Bakersfield come and meet us at Disneyland for one last day of fun. Little did we know that up the road, just south of Valencia, there was a raging fire that had closed I-5 (oh wait, isn't that the way home???). Wendy, Tracy and Kaiden had driven down the day before so they missed out on all the fun. (Check out their blog for details) There was also a fire that was burning about 7 miles from Disneyland that made sure that ash and soot rained down on us all day. Did we let little things like ash and smoke keep us from playing outside all day? NO WAY!!! We put Lucas in the stroller and covered it with a blanket (so he wouldn't get covered with ashes) and off we went.

Kaiden (or was it Tracy?) really wanted to see the Jedi Academy training. We watched a bits and pieces of it with the Romney boys but this time we sat down and watched the whole thing. I have to say that the Jedi Master who was in charge of training all the "younglings" was hilarious! He was very witty and had a great sense of humor. We were all cracking up. At the end of the training, Darth Mal and Darth Vader both came out on stage for the kids to fight. It was pretty cool.

We went back to Mickey's Toontown and actually got to see Mickey Mouse this time (our camera wasn't acting up so Mickey was home! Isn't it funny how that works?) Lucas was hungry and tired at that point so he cried and Emma was so excited that she just stared at Mickey the whole time. We couldn't get her to look at the camera at all. I guess that's what happens when you meet your favorite celebrity. The best part about Mickey's house was that we got out of the smoke for a few minutes.





As we were walking down Main Street in Disneyland, we noticed just how bad the smoke was and took this picture...
Keep in mind that this was taken around noon and if you look just behind the Christmas tree, the sun was shining somewhere in LA...just not on us. Can you believe we were out in that crap? Me neither now that I look at the pictures.

We didn't let that stop us!! No, no. We still kept going!! We headed over to California Adventures for a few rides and to see the Disney Pixar Parade later on that night. We had seen part of the parade on Wednesday but this time we got to see it all. Guess who we missed the first time around?? Lightning McQueen!!!! Emma and Kaiden both love "Cars" so they were pretty excited to see #95.
They had characters from almost all of the pixar movies. Bringing up the rear was Emma's other favorite from "Cars", Mater. What more could a little girl ask for? Hey Lucas, how did you like the parade? Was it a little too boring for you?


Throughout the day, we were getting updates on the road conditions (thank you to everyone we called all day long). Michael and I decided that we were too tired from the previous week (gee, I wonder why?) to do the 4 hour detour suggested by the CHP, so we ended up finding a cheap hotel and staying over night. However, Wendy and Tracy are more die hard than we are and they did the detour. They really only beat us home by a few hours. :-)