Holiday Kickoff Day at Disneyland

Holiday kickoff day, our official start to the season, so everyone wore the part — the girls in Minnie ears with the polka dot bows, Santa hats and Christmas Mickey shirts across the board.

We started at "it's a small world," which has its holiday overlay up already — they string 50,000 lights across that façade, though in the middle of the day you mostly get the giant Santa hat perched on the clock tower. From there we crossed over to California Adventure and hung around Paradise Pier while the sky went pink behind the wheel, then came back for the Mad Tea Party. The girls took their own teacup and I'm still not sure who was spinning it harder.

The Christmas parade came down Main Street with Mickey and Minnie in matching snowflake sweaters and Donald riding on top of a frozen glove, which is a sentence I'll enjoy re-reading later. Main Street itself was wall-to-wall people under the big tree, half of them apparently Raiders fans, and getting anywhere took twice as long as it should have.

One of the girls has a fresh cut over her eyebrow that made it into the season this year too.