right this way folks...

for a tour of disneyland, bachart style.

here aidan and nadia are waiting in line for the haunted house which was all decked out 'nightmare before christmas' style.

here we are on the astrosomethingorother.  i sat this one out to save the nausea for bigger things.

and here are aidan and nadia just moments before we boarded space mountain.

and here is tony kissing me goodbye because he is sure i am going to puke and there will be no kissy face after that.

and here i am proving him wrong.  there was no puke for me, thank you very much.  although 15 seconds into star tours and my head was practically between my knees, which is were i kept it for the duration.

here are my children celebrating their first and only ride into the pit of space hell. 

and here is some sibling bonding.  part of disney magic is that brother and sister cease all fighting and become powerful allies.  they say cute things like thank you, and what ride do you want next and you're my best friend.  i think they put something in the ice cream. 

and here we are with crazy eyebrows on splash mountain.

and here we are having ice cream for dinner.

and here nadia is sans pants. splash mountain plus jeans equals certain discomfort.  one hoody from daddy to the rescue.

and here nadia and i are feeling particularly snazzy after she did some serious grooving on the tron dance floor.

this girl has more moves than disney has pixie dust.

and here my lovely family is riding the train around to the front of the park so we can hurry on over to california adventure to score some fast passes.

and here we are again after california screamin.  if i had longer arms there would have been four of us in this picture, all with thumbs up.  how this made it to the top of our collective favorites i will never understand.

and here nadia is clinging for dear life and i am trying desperately not to get sick on, wait for it...the ferris wheel.  that's right, the ferris wheel.  one line leads you to the placid gondolas that take you up and around all nice and sweet like.  nadia was too terrified of that idea, but was down for the swinging gondolas.  swinging equals motions sickness for dear old mom.  actually, we all hated this one.  

and here we are soaking up the compounded magical greatness that is disneyland times christmas. 

it. was. awesome.

and here tony is hanging on for dear life.  the rest of us loved the tower of terror.



and here i am lending aidan a hand so he can eat a chocolate chip cookie, a fortune cookie and a gingerbread man while sipping his sprite.  

and here we are enjoying the magical miniature models in mickey mouse's storybook land.

and here we are riding the carousel under the sea.  apparently the bachart's family crest has a blazin' green fish which made aidan and nadia love this particular carousel more than most.

and here we are trying on more hats. i spared you the other seven or so shots of various bacharts in various hats.  you are welcome.

 and here aidan is waiting like he belongs on the cover of country club kids monthly for the production of aladdin.  this was by far the longest wait we had and so worth it. 

 and here aidan and nadia are trying to walk straight after a trip on the tea cups.  i flat refused to go with them.  tony bailed on them too. it was completely weird not to have one of us on a ride with them, but they loved it.

i think the best part about the whole trip for tony and i was the surprise part. but then again maybe the best part was how little stress there was around the trip as a whole.  or maybe the best part was all of the thank yous we got, or all of the smiles from aidan and nadia.  or maybe it was all of the lights and sparkle.  or maybe it was that the two of them were appreciative of each others company.  or maybe it is that aidan puked like twenty seconds after this picture was taken but powered on to the finding nemo submarine without hesitation.

or maybe it was the just the magic of it all.