Josh has been dreaming of a vacation for a year. We did some trips during the summer, and they were all super fun! But they just didn’t quite hit the spot for Josh. He was thinking bigger, longer, more relaxing. Also, Josh’s parents have been talking about how it would be fun for them to go on a trip with just our family–to spend some quality time with just our kids, because babies now abound in the Monson family and the newest ones always require the most attention.

Anyway, so Josh one day, around Thanksgiving, just decided we needed to go to Disneyland as soon as possible, and also that it would be the perfect opportunity for his parents to have their trip with us. So he called them up. It did take a while to convince them, though. I think he was on the phone with Mom for about 18 seconds by the time he got a solid affirmative response. 😉 So then plans went into the works and everything was scheduled within the week. But we decided to not tell the kids about it. (This was our plan before we learned about Jordan and Crystal’s family doing the same thing.)

We made the big reveal right when it was time to get in the car. Their reactions were initially somewhat lackluster–I think just because it was all so much to take in; but by the time things actually did sink in, they were much more excited. And despite an semi-anticlimactic reveal, we had a really fun trip!

Our time at Disneyland was spent as you might imagine. We rode the rides, waited in the lines, met the princesses and other characters, ate yummy things, and walked a lot! Carter initially had the concern that it was going to be snowing at Disneyland and that it would, therefore, not be much fun. We told him that it doesn’t snow at Disneyland, but that it would probably feel like springtime weather there, and that helped him feel much better about everything. And indeed, there was no snow; though we did have a lot of rain on day 3 in the parks. It was nice, though, because, at least in the morning, we kind of just walked on to whatever rides we felt like. To give you some perspective the wait time for Indiana Jones was 15 minutes.

Here is some photographic evidence of our fun trip!

Another notable aspect of the trip was that we left some of our luggage on our very first shuttle from the parking lot to the airport in SLC. Despite our great efforts to retrieve it, we had to leave it behind. That suitcase held all the girls’ clothes. So, darn it! We had to buy them all new clothes! 😀 I have dreamed of leaving on vacation and just not packing at all. This was pretty close to living that dream. Though there were also some inconveniences like a missing favorite blankets and no swimming suits to be had because it was December. Still it made things more memorable!

We had a wonderful trip! And we’re so grateful to Mom, Dad, and Jayden for making it so much easier for us to be there!

And we came home to all the Christmas festivities! One highlight each year is our ward Christmas breakfast. They have done ugly sweater contests (I actually think most “ugly” sweaters are just fun and cute) for the past few years; and Josh goes all out for them (surprise)! He even won it this year!

The week before Disneyland was one of my absolute favorite Christmas traditions: the Festival of Trees! We had so much fun looking at amazing trees, wreaths, gingerbread houses, etc. as well as watching the fun song and dance numbers! Here are the kids posing on one of the stages. It’s blurry; but they are cute!