Our Disney Trip

Well, we are home from our annual mecca to Disney. What a great time!
We spent 4 nights and 5 days taking in as many sites and sounds as
possible.

On Thursday we drove to Orlando and checked into our hotel. We stayed
at Port Orleans, French Quarter. This is our favorite place to stay.
It is not a huge resort. It is smaller yet packed with everything we
need.

After checking in we were off to Mickey's Backyard BBQ at Fort
Wilderness. This is an outdoor character show... experience and
dinner. WOW!! Talk about an amazing evening. There was non-stop
entertainment including everything from dancing with the characters to
a live band, line dance lessons, lasso demonstration, a dinner buffet
and all the beer and wine you can drink included! haha It was so
much fun for all of us. James was plucked from the audience to
participate in the lasso demonstration. He was AWESOME!! Riley did
the locomotion to Chip, Madeline screamed bloddy murder whenever a
character looked her way... but ate a ton of mac and cheese. She did
start to dance as the night wore on.

On Friday we spent the day at the Magic Kingdom. Riley about broke
his mother's neck again this year on the race cars. Madeline took her
first carousel ride with MARY POPPINS. Yup! Good ole' Mary Poppins
plopped right down next to Madeline. Madeline just kind of stared at
her... not really sure what to make of the lady in the big white hat.
James conquered Space Mountain with Jerry again. All the boys went
on Splash Mountain. Riley LOVED it! Now, we were pretty sure James
would love it... but not so sure how Ri would handle it. He thought
it was the best thing ever. Overall we had a fantastic yet exhausting
day.

On Saturday we were up and off to Breakfast with the Characters at the
Cape May restaurant at the Beach Club. James and Riley loved it.
Madeline... hmmm.. not so much. Having those big headed things so
close was not her idea of fun. By the time the third or fourth
character sauntered by our table... she wasn't screaming... she just
kept trying to stare them down with her best 18 month old evil eye.
After breakfast we headed to Downtown Disney. Madeline climbed up the
Lego house and down the slide at least 30 times. She would screech
with excitement all the way up the steps. What a hoot! Riley built
little creations while James oversaw all the events. We met up with
Mary's friend Joe from work and spent some time chatting and talking.
After all of this excitement we had to get some swimming in. Whew!
By the end of the day we were just as tired as we had been after the
Magic Kingdom.

On Sunday we were back to the parks. We spent abpit 6 hours at MGM
taking in Star Wars weekend. What a hoot! We saw the parade and had
to have seen no less than several hundred people in full Star Wars
regalia. We went to the show Lights! Motors! Action! for the first
time. It was EXCELLENT. We highly recommend it! Wow! Talk about
heart stopping excitment. Riley got to meet the Yellow Power Ranger.
He thought that was probably the coolest thing ever. He spent the
rest of the day doing "power poses" for us. He is such a cook! We
ended Sunday by spending a few hours at Epcot. James wanted to shop
for Pokemon stuff in Japan and Riley lucked out finding a HUGE Power
Rangers display. We closed down the park and dragged our weary bodies
back to the hotel... of course stopping for some hot, fresh beignets
first.

Today we got up, ate breakfast, hit the pool again and shopped at
Downtown Disney one last time before heading home.

It was truly a great family trip.

We have uploaded about 16 pictures from the trip to the Disney 2007
folder on the site. Check 'em out. We took over 200 pictures.. so I
did my best to just pick out a few great ones.

We hope this little update finds everyone happy, healthy and ready for
some summer fun!!!