TGWH

Which stands for Thank God We're Home. It was truly a magical time spending four days at Disneyland for Andrei's 2nd birthday. But as I mentioned, and I think most people feel this way, it always feels good to come home from even the best vacations.

Our final day in Disneyland was spent with the approach we found that made him happiest: letting him running around and going on rides over and over again. There are actually two different areas that are perfect for the toddler crowd. The first is Mickey's ToonTown that is in Disneyland and the other is A Bug's Land in the California Adventure park. The Bug's Land was actually a lot more fun because it was far less crowded and Andrei doesn't really know all the movies and such yet (the only Disney movie he's ever watched all the way thru was The Many Adventure of Winnie the Pooh).

All the rides are basically the same as Fantasyland and there is tons of fun stuff similar to Mickey's ToonTown. So we found that he actually liked it more. And that's where we spent most of this morning.

Overall the visit was far better than our expectations and we feel that future trips will be far more often than we originally planned. If you've read the blog in the past you know I grew up in L.A. and am an old Disneyland veteran, so additional visits are just fine with us.

Our drive home was actually painless and Andrei didn't seem to mind the 6 hour journey as much as he did the trip down there. He was able to get a 1 hour nap in the car and even seemed to be as happy as we were to be home.

But I will certainly always remember this visit (even with some temper tantrums) as a fantastic vacation. And I am so happy this was our first family vacation and that we did it in the way we did it (just the 3 of us, a short trip, and something that we knew would fill him with joy).