The Happiest Place on Earth

For the past year, I'd planned on spending my birthday at Disneyland. I love Christmas and Disney does Christmas well. One thing after another derailed those plans and I made alternate plans. During the derailing, my sister invited me to join her family the weekend before Thanksgiving, which would have been great as the last few times I've gone to Disneyland it has been with her family during the holiday season. However, flight prices during that time were astronomical. I had a small flying window as I was saving vacation days for a big trip next year and money to buy a place. Not being able to justify the cost, I declined my sister's invitation. Painful decision.

Well about two weeks before the said trip, my sister emailed me saying, "I’m just confirming that you are not coming with us to Disneyland.  I made some dining reservations, and I included you on those reservations.  I’m going to be fined if you don’t show up, so I need to either take you off the reservation, or I just need to know that you are actually coming……"

Fate had intervened. I had the thought to look at flights with my frequent flier miles and I found one that fit exactly in my flight window. After a call to my mom for a sanity check, I booked the flight. What my mom actually said to me when I asked her if I was crazy was "No more crazy than driving to Vegas for cheesecake. You should go." (Aside: my sister and I drove from Provo to Vegas once to buy my mom cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory for her birthday. This was when gas was $1.50 and Utah didn't have a Cheesecake Factory yet.)

Absolutely no regrets from this trip. We had the best time! Three of my favorite moments: watching my nephew play with his high school band along main street, being the last on Space Mountain at 12:30am and my niece pointing to the Olaf house with Elsa and Anna inside and saying, "I want to get in that line." I love Disneyland at Christmas with my family.

Thanks to her dad, she got to see Elsa and Anna.

Isn't it magical?