60

It all started a few months ago when Sam made the comment to his mom, "dad's turning 60 next year, what are we going to do?"  The plan changed several times, all revolving around trying to find a way for him to be around his kids for his birthday.  There was talk about driving up to Sac and surprising him but it was looking like it would be a challenge for most to make that happen.  Finally, they decided to be down here at Disneyland for his birthday and Nicki and Mandi were going to surprise him by being at our house when they got back.  Then they found out McKay could come, even better and it changed to a surprise meeting for dinner at Downtown Disney.  Then McKay said, if we are right there, why aren't we going to Disneyland.  Sam said that we couldn't all by tickets and McKay said he could get us all in with his Pixar passes.   Then we started to get excited and planned to surprise him inside the park instead of out and then hang out there Friday night.  Mandi, who hasn't been to Disneyland in 4 years, realized that instead of going in for a few hours Friday night, she would rather go in all day on Saturday so we were back to dinner at Downtown Disney but the park all day Saturday.  Then even Deveren realized he could make it so all they were missing was Nate.   So the Friday night after everyone arrived at our house we headed over to the Rainforest Cafe and waited for him to arrive.  We got a picture of all the kids together and then headed to our table with just Deia and Eli on the lookout who were sent ahead to get a table.   If you see in the picture above, Deia was watching for them and Eli through the fish tank.

Finally he arrived, and boy was he surprised.  I tried to catch a picture from when he first saw everyone but it wasn't clear, but basically he held the same look of surprise/excitement on his face for almost 10 minutes.

We had a really fun dinner together and then headed down through Downtown Disney.  Then Sam gave them the idea that three people could still go that night with McKay into the park.   That left just us out so we took Deia, who wasn't feeling well, home and the rest of them were able to spend Friday evening in the park as well. 

Saturday morning we left bright and early around 6 am to make sure we were first in line for California Adventure. The season pass holders got to go in early and left us there waiting at the gate so we took this picture to say "what's up with that?!!" but it didn't really phase them!

We hit Radiator Springs Racers first of course!

By the time we made it to Toys Story, the rest of the group joined us.  They were able to talk Grandma Borgia into all the rides and their wheelchairs helped us get ahead on most of them!

These are the pictures from Screamin'.   Sam said that Grandma said "we are going up, that means we have to go down soon!"

A little Star Tours action!

And then the jungle cruise!

And of course we had some fun with our Space Mountain picture!

By closing time Saturday night, we were all exhausted! But it was so fun to be together and Mandi, Deveren and Nicki even talked McKay into taking them again the next day before they headed home!

Meanwhile, back at the house Eden and Tucker were having fun with their cousins.  On Friday night they both stayed back, Isaac came to Disneyland on Saturday but the kids at home had a great time. They spent a lot of time playing with the superhero toys and  I guess they must have played with Jordan's ipod because I found the second two pictures there!