Bye America...its been a blast!

Its one of those bitter sweet moments where you are sad your holiday adventure is over but also looking forward to sleeping in your own bed...and god forbid eating some vegetables ha ha!  Today we are packing up ready to head for LAX for the trek home...which is no mean feat considering someone has bought way to much stuff (if only I could blame someone else).  Jade is down at the hotel pool complex for one last swim and run around - they have the coolest kids area which has slides and fountains and buckets that tip water on you - so she is in her element!  Our day at Universal Studios was great (after a rocky start with a spoilt brat child) but hey I must admit she has been pretty good this wole trip.  We started with the studio tour which takes about an hour...they drive you all around the complex and show you the back lot where they make all the movies and how they do the special effects and everything.  Drove down Wisteria Lane and saw all the girls houses from Desperate Housewives - they were actually filming that day - but much to Jeremys disappointment it was inside so he didnt get a glimpse of Eva Longoria.  The King Kong part was cool and it made you proud to hear about Weta Digital and listen to Peter Jackson talk.  Jade and I hung out at the Curious George park while Jeremy went off and did The Mummy ride, Jurrasic Park and Terminator rides (which werent really suitable for little people) so that kept him happy.  All in all it was a great day and Jade was very happy to have met and had photos with Shrek and Curious George.  Yesterday we spent our final day at Disneyland going on the rest of the rides so we didnt miss anything...we started with Space Mountain which is a pretty fast rollacoster in the pitch black...Jade was not so impressed with that!  But regained her smile for the Winnie the Pooh ride and her photo with him :)   Another magical day filled with fun rides and things to see...oh and shopping!  Cant wait to show you all the photos.  See you all soon, love D, J & J x

Happy New Year

So as it turns out Jeremy did a great job of driving the Cadillac through the maze of freeways in LA to get us to our Disneyland hotel for the next 6 nights...thank you GPS!  New Years Eve dawned and we hit Disneyland at 8am for the day...god that place is so magical...you dont have to be a kid to appreciate just how cool it is.  Jade had an absolute ball going on all the rides and meeting Mickey, Minnie and Goofy :)  Towards the end of the day the lines were quite long with 60 minute waits on the main rides...but typical Jade amused herself by talking to all the kids in the line and coped really well.  We stayed for the fireworks display at 9pm - which was amazing by far the best display I have ever seen - then headed back to the hotel at 10pm absolutely beat!  We were then awoken at midnight by the biggest rumbling...I actually thought it was an earthquake in my half asleep state...but no it was another magnificent fireworks display at Disneyland which we got to watch from our hotel balcony.  Happy New Year!!  The next day it was up early again for our bus ride to Legoland, which is about an hour from here, where we spent the first day of 2011 going on the coolest rides :)  And the best part was there were no lines as everyone was either still in bed hungover or at the big New Years Day parade they have here.  Legoland has a totally different feel from Disney, but had heaps of rides which Jade could do on her own which was cool.  One particular rollacoster scared the living daylights out of me...but Jeremy and Jade proceeded to go on it another 4 times!  My favourite part was Miniland, which is a depiction of America in lego, it was amazing...unfortunately I only got a brief look as Jade and Jeremy didnt find it as interesting and were busy looking for the next ride.  Today was a bit of a struggle, it seems the trip, weather and crap food have caught up with J and I and we both have the achy body cold :(  This was made a little worse by a freezing cold, rainy day in which we were on the Grand Tour of LA so in and out of the bus checking out all the sights.  So now its an early night ready for our next adventure...a day at Universal Studios.