Once upon a time....

Our family decided to spend one of our favorite holidays at Disneyland this year.

Halloween!

We did the Disney Trick-or-treat event.

There were so many characters out. Our kids had a blast. I even convinced them to stand in line to see a few princesses.

By far Ben's favorite were some older trick or treaters there having fun and not even part of Disneyland.

But it was a dream come true for Ben.

He is all about Luigi!

We loved our hotel. It was so nice and clean. The suite had a full kitchen. Zachary loved the fact that they provided microwaveable popcorn, and Ben couldn't believe they had a phone in the bathroom.

Our family gets serious about Halloween. Since Zachary was a baby I made Dave dress up with us. Each year our family does a theme together. We have done Blues clues, Star Wars, Farmers w/animals, Bob the builder and as far back as November last year we had planned to be Smurfs this year. However when we decided to do Disneyland we decided that might be a little hard to walk around all blue. So we repeated one of our favorite themes, Disney characters! Dave was (the handsomest!) Peter Pan, I was Wendy, Zach was Captain Hook, Coleman was a pirate, Ben was stitch and Oliver was Squirt the turtle. Stitch is the best costume for Ben. It really fits his personality! And Oliver was the cutest Squirt. We took him into "Turtle Talk" wearing the costume.

If you are not familiar with turtle talk, it is a big TV screen with Crush the turtle on it. Except the animation is in real time. Crush actually talks to the audience and answers questions. He spotted Oliver in the crowd and talked to him thinking it washis son squirt. Oliver was pretty stunned to hear the turtle talking to him!

Here are some of my favorite pictures and memories...

Zachary & Coleman on Splash Mountain.

Meeting Lightning McQueen and Mater.

The obligatory Tea Cup picture. (This trip we realized we are really a two tea cup family.)

Our kids were so excited to meet Dale, they knocked him over with hugs!

Oliver was whining about just sitting when we took him into "Playhouse Disney live" As soon as it started and the characters came out he was hypnotized and realized it was worth the wait.

Since our first visit Ben has been in love with JoJo. My favorite has always been Goliath. We were happy to see them still there!

Coleman loved meeting Captain Jack Sparrow. He has started playing Disney's Pirates online. Captain Jack stole Coleman's hat, then used Coleman's head as a table to write down his autograph. Coleman loved it all.

Oliver waiting happily because he found a little person place to sit.