Disneyland Paris - Italy and France trip Day 10 part 2

Continuing from part 1 of our trip, Ruston, Jacob, Theresa and I are all at Disneyland Paris.
For our next ride, we went back to Storybook land and rode the canal boats. There was no line and we were able to walk right on and have our own boat to ourselves! There are no guides on the boats here either and they have some interesting scenes we don’t.

Disneyland Paris - Italy and France trip Day 10 part 1

Well I'm finally getting back to our trip we had this summer. And it happens to be one of the best days!
It's our first day at Disneyland Paris!

Read on to hear about all our adventures!

Borgello Gallery, Santa Croce Basillica, Flight to France - Florence Italy - Italy and France trip Day 9

After getting to sleep late, it felt like a really early morning. We’ve got to check out of our room by 10:30-11am, so we woke up at 10am. We didn’t have much to get packed, so we were out of there pretty quick. Thankfully even though we're checking out, we can keep our bags in the lobby while we explore the city.

Museum of Precious Stones, Mercato Centrale, Accademia - Florence Italy - Italy and France trip Day 8

We set the alarm for 9:30 this morning and laid in bed for just a little while.  We got ready fairly quickly and headed out.  On the way, we confirmed we’d be able to check out fairly late tomorrow, 10:30-11am. We can leave our bags in the lobby and they’ll give us a set of keys to use to get back in later. Sweet!
I think we left the hotel by 10ish, and we were off to see some more cool stuff. 

Palazzo Vecchio, Galileo museum, Uffizi gallery - Florence Italy - Italy and France trip Day 7

Well I got a bit busy and we've done quite a few things since the last time I wrote up our Italy/France visit. Time to restart those.

The room gets pretty nice and dark. Going to sleep, we were hearing some banging around on the floors above us, so we both got ear plugs. Combine that with the sound machine and a dark room and we both slept until 10:30am. We got everything ready for the day and left for the Palazzo Vecchio.

Travel to Florence, Duomo, Baptistry and Duomo Museum - Florence Italy - Italy and France trip Day 6

Today we're traveling up north to Florence!

It's 175 miles north of our current location, so we'll be taking the train to get there.

Here's all the places we went during the day.

Colosseum, St Peter in Chains, Christ bearing the Cross and more - Rome Italy - Italy and France trip Day 5

Today we're going to the Colosseum and anything else we happen to squeeze in.

Here's a look at the places we'll be visiting.

Vatican Museum and St Peter's Basilica - Rome Italy - Italy and France trip Day 4

Today we're spending most of our time at the smallest country in the world, the Vatican, population 770.

Here's all the places we went so you can follow along below.

Borghese Gallery, Pantheon, and Four Rivers Fountain - Rome Italy - Italy and France trip Day 3

There's lots of fun stuff to see today.

I thought this might be a fun way to keep track of all the places we ended up going. Our hotel is at #1 and we continue from there.

Rome Italy - Italy and France trip Day 2

Today is going to be an interesting day… We’ll get to those fun stories in a bit. We turned the lights out early last night and by 9pm I was fast asleep. I barely stirred the entire night. Unfortunately at 1:10am, I woke up and was wide awake. I laid in bed until 1:30am but couldn’t fall back asleep. This seems to be typical when we cross a few time zones. I read my book until Theresa woke up around 3:30am.

We got all our bags packed up and left the room around 5am. The airport is literally right next door so we walked over there for breakfast. The only thing open at that time was the McDonalds so we ordered off an automated touch-screen and soon picked up our food.

Dusseldorf Germany - Italy and France trip Day 1

Ready for another adventure?
Every year we try to take a big vacation around July 4th.  Previous trips have included Tahiti and Bora Bora. This year instead of a relaxing vacation, we're going back to some places we've visited before but didn't spend enough time.  
Follow along as we go to Rome, Florence, Disneyland Paris, and Paris!

We're flying on free airline tickets (that's a whole other post) on Air Berlin.  The way we're routed, we're leaving Los Angeles at 6pm and taking an 11 hour flight to Dusseldorf Germany.  The next morning, we'll catch a flight to Rome.  We left work just a little early on Thursday to head to the airport and have dinner.
Even though we'll be gone for a little over 2 weeks, we still only do carry-on bags.  Each of us got our tickets from the Air Berlin counter and they actually weighed our carry-on bag.  There's a limit of 10kg (22 pounds) and each of our bags was right on.  I'm really glad they didn't ask to weigh my camera bag!  With all my lenses, the laptop, etc, it might look small but I bet it's over 10kg.

2013 Pasadena Chalk Festival

We're making this an annual tradition now.  On Sunday, June 16, we drove up to Pasadena to join Ruston and Jacob to check out the chalk festival.

But we're going to make a pit stop first. We missed a few of the really cool exhibits at Forest Lawn Cemetery when we were here for our Walk in Walt's footsteps Los Angeles tour.

Richard and Chi comes to visit and we celebrate Father's Day

Richard and Chi came out to visit from Michigan. 
It's been a fun week together. First off they were able to join us for our prenatal appointment and were there with us when we found out the sex of the new baby.

So is new Baby Flowers going to be a Girl or a Boy?

We just had our appointment on Tuesday to find out what we're having!
This is how we told our friends and family.  Make sure the sound is on and don't read the rest of this report without watching the video.

Theresa was impressed with my creativity with the gender announcement. She said it was better than any other baby gender reveal she's ever seen.

The Wedors join us at Disneyland

Well this had the beginnings of a very very short trip report. 
Let's start with some background.  A single day park-hopper to Disneyland is now $130 a day. Yikes!  Out at Walt Disney World in Florida, they offer tickets at similar prices, but with one unique difference. A "No Expiration" option on multi-day tickets.  For the past 6-7 years now, some of our family has been using the little known trick that a valid WDW ticket is also good at Disneyland. That means if you can afford the up-front costs of a 10-day no expiration day ticket for ~$689, your effective cost for a single day at Disneyland could be as low as $68.90 a day.

At least that's how it has worked up until today. 

A typical exchange at the ticket gate is informing the cast member that you're using a WDW ticket and then waiting off to the side while a manager is called. The manager takes the ticket, heads off to a back room where they subtract a day from your WDW ticket and give you a paper ticket to Disneyland. The whole process usually takes 5 minutes or so.
That's what happened on Saturday morning, except after the manager took the WDW tickets, he came back 5 minutes later saying they weren't doing that anymore... Uh....  Okay.... 

So I guess that's it then. Time to pack up and head home.

Tiny Flowers

So, how did we end up telling our friends and family that we were expecting a new addition?  With just a little bit of misdirection, I suppose.

Normally I'd put all my photos on the blog here, but in this case, I made a site specifically for this. We then sent an email to each person and called them at the same time, telling them to check out a new direction I was thinking about going with my photography.  Instead of just taking photos, I told them that I was experimenting with video, and to check out my first video with some of my favorite tiny flowers.

And then I included a few more photos of various flowers below it, just to make it a little more believable. I think everyone who saw it was surprised.

Mike, Lindsey and Macy visit from Colorado

Mike, Lindsey and Macy are visiting from Colorado Springs for a few days.
Macy sure is getting big!

Our next big adventure - Coming early November

Ready for another fun adventure?  This one is coming in November!

Disneyland with Ruston and Jacob - Club 1901

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon and we're back at Disneyland with Ruston and Jacob.