This is already the greatest family vacation we’ve ever done, and we haven’t even gotten to the best part.

We arrived in Anaheim yesterday but had no plans to hit the parks yet, so we had most of the day to (gasp) relax. We shopped a bit (Brayden insisted on buying a very cool R2D2-Mickey-ears hat) and spent a couple hours at the pirate-themed waterpark at the hotel (Brayden ran out of superlatives for this one: “extremely fun”, “super fun”, “super mega fun”…)

Chris wanted to go back to Downtown Disney for supper, so we wandered back there but found that our restaurant of choice was packed. We were all hot and tired, and things were starting to get ugly…but then Brayden pointed to a Louisiana-style building and asked if it was a restaurant, and if it was, could we go there? It turned out to be a great choice, one that we never would have considered otherwise. Good call, B.

By the time we made it back to the hotel, everybody was bagged. I gave the kids a quick bath and let them play some iPad for a while before tucking them in. Everyone — and I mean everyone — was asleep by 8:30 p.m. Nice.