a bonus day at disney

the bean's school did parent-teacher conferences at the end of last week, with a half day of school on thursday and a day off on friday.  and because the bean has been doing so well so far this year, she was one of the lucky kids who took home a golden ticket of sorts - a note that said her teacher didn't find it necessary to have a conference.  of course, we could have one if we wanted to, but looking at the work she takes home and the progress report that also came home recently, we knew we didn't need one.

and so what did we do with our day off?  well, we went to disneyland...of course.  even better, it was the first day of their lunar new year celebrations:

there were drummers and a dragon out to kick off the celebrations.

and of course, there were tasty tidbits available at those little kiosks.  we decided to grab a serving of the soup dumplings:

and a pork bao with some almond cookies.

and the bean chose to have a lantern painted on her face at the complimentary booth.

we found the AP corner, where we picked up a free button and a photo op:

and the bean wrote a wish that she tied to the display while we waited in line.

we didn't do a lot of rides, but we did visit ariel at the little mermaid ride and waited in the short line for a turn at goofy's sky school.

can i also show you my fabulous glitter sneakers that just so happen to match my rose gold minnie ears?

we'd snagged a fastpass for the toy story mania ride, and found with the updates and things being done on the pier that there's only one way to get back to that ride now.  there are lots of these colorful walls up with renderings showing how things will look back there as they change it over to pixar pier, scheduled to open this summer.

we love this ride, although the line is usually super long so we don't do it often.

seeing all the scaffolding and the rides torn apart is kind of sad.

oh, and we ran into judy hopps from "zootopia" too!  i think this is the first time we've seen her out and about.

and then as we headed towards the animation academy we came across mater, too.

it just so happened that this was the very first day that they'd added dug from the movie "up" to their lineup of characters to draw.  we managed to get into the first class, and here's how mine turned out:

the bean was super unsatisfied with  hers and so she wouldn't let me post it.  heh.

it was a fun day at california adventure, and we even got home in a decent amount of time for a friday afternoon.  hopefully we'll get back there again soon so we can sample the rest of the lunar new year treats!