The Adventures of Jadon and Kalina: Disneyland

In January we took an exciting trip to Disneyland! Now, some of you may be thinking, didn’t you just go to Disney World last year? Why yes, yes we did. That trip inspired this trip.

We happened to be at Disney World last year during the Disney Princess Half-Marathon weekend. Kalina and I happened to be at our resort the morning of the races. Many of the racers were also staying there. As I watched all these people return from running I thought, “If they can do it, so can I”. I really have no idea why that thought came to me. I am not a runner. I had never run any appreciable distance. But, I had made up my mind. I called my sister to try to talk her into doing it with me (while we were still on vacation). She thought I had just gotten a little too much sun. After careful consideration, she declined my offer a few weeks later, when she realized I really was serious.

I found a training program that was do-able with my life and schedule. I started training almost immediately after we came home. A short time later we had dinner with some friends. I was telling them this story. Not long after that, my friend Jayne offered to run with me. We did some research and decided we would train for the Tinkerbelle Half Marathon at Disneyland in January 2014.

What do you do if you plan to run a race at Disneyland? Take the family with you! We have been friends with Jayne and her family since we moved to Washington so it was almost like traveling with family. Our schedules didn’t perfectly align, so they went on Thursday and returned on Monday while we went on Friday and returned on Tuesday. We had time to spend with them and time to ourselves. It worked out well.

We arrived late Friday night. We spent Saturday at Disneyland. Jadon was disappointed because he was not able to ride Star Tours (and he was at Disney World). Luckily, his disappointment did not last long as we found more fun things to do. We didn’t stay too late at the park. For dinner, we introduced our friends to one of our favorite Chicago restaurants – Portillo’s. There is one in Buena Park, California (the closest one to us here in Washington). Yum! Great pre-race food.

The half-marathon was Sunday morning. Jayne and I had to be there bright and early (4:30 AM). We started running around 5:40 AM. So, here we are – two non-runners running a half marathon. We don’t live close so we never actually ran together until the race. That didn’t seem to be a problem. We ran well together. Andy was able to track our progress during the race and timed everything so our families could meet us near the finish. Our goal in this whole adventure was to finish and not be last. We did that and managed to have fun doing it. The weather was great, too.

After the race, some of returned to the hotel to get clean and rest. The others stayed at Disneyland and rode roller coasters. We returned to the park at lunch time. Our family spent the afternoon at Disneyland again. We returned to our hotel to have dinner with the Hamminghs and celebrate the Seahawks’ victory (meaning they would go to the Superbowl).

We rose early on Monday and spent the day at California Adventure. We got to ride Toy Story Mania 4 times throughout the day. That ride is one of our favorites. We even figured out (with help from the Disney staff) how to adjust the ride so Jadon and Kalina could actually play and do everything themselves. We had lunch at Ariel’s Grotto and Kalina got to meet lots of princesses (Jadon was a good sport). Meeting the characters is still one of her favorite things to do. We stayed at the park the entire day. We even made it to the night light show. Well worth the wait.

We were lucky and had beautiful weather the whole time. Jadon and Kalina had a great time at the parks and we enjoyed spending time with our friends.

Now Jayne and I are considering our next running adventure…