We decided to make the most of Martin Luther King weekend and headed down to Los Angeles for a few days. We eventually set off on Friday evening after I finished work and arrived at our hotel around 2am!

The next morning, we got up early, had breakfast and headed into Disneyland, which was just over the road from where we were staying.

We had thought that having just one day in Disneyland wouldn’t be enough, but we found that we got to do quite a lot of the things we wanted to.

Here we are on the first ride of the day ‘It’s a Small World’.

We had beignets and listened to live music in the New Orleans quarter…

…blasted some aliens…

…met some Disney characters…

…took a few selfies…

…and rode on Splash Mountain.

There were a lot of Star Wars themed events following the release of The Force Awakens. This pleased Joshua in particular who had concerns about too many princesses etc!

Eve, Joshua and Lucy enrolled in the ‘Trials of the Temple’ Jedi Academy. They were trained in the ways of The Force and the use of a lightsaber, then they put on a live show in which they raised the Jedi Temple using The Force and battled with Darth Vader, Darth Maul and the Seventh Sister.

I’d like to introduce you to the latest graduates of the Jedi Academy:

Eve Windu

Qui Gon Josh

Lucy Skywalker

We saw this parked by the Jedi Temple…

We finished the day off by watching the evening parade and firework/light show.

Heather is a bit of a genius and a fantastic mother, so she had this idea to write her phone number on each of the kids’ arms, so that if they got lost in madding crowds, we would get a phone call. Well, we put the kids straight to bed on the evening and it seems that Josh must have slept resting on his arm, because the next morning, he looked like this…

The road trip also involved lots of swimming…

 

…a visit to the LA Temple…

…a picnic in Lake Hollywood Park…

…and a stop in foggy Santa Barbara…

We finally hit the road from Santa Barbara back up to San Jose, having had a brilliant long weekend.