As you may recall, we spent the morning of our third day at the Magic Kingdom.  As we were heading out at about 3 pm, back to the hotel for naps, we came across . . . We knew that anything bought at Disney would be expensive.  But we’d made a 1-souvenir-toy-per-day rule for the boys, and they’d not yet selected the day’s toy, and we figured a balloon would be a cheap option.  Noooooope. We bought one single balloon for them to share, which is, to be honest, still going strong in their room upstairs (I’ve been told the helium can last for 3 months on these things).  We…

It takes a full two minutes for each single picture to upload to this blog, because our internet is thaaaaat slooooooow.  (No cable or fiber optic laid on our 5 year old upscale suburban street, we have to rely on old-fashioned phone-line internet, for reasons that passeth understanding in this day and age).  So I only have time to do these picture updates on Saturday mornings.  This is day three of four, so we’re almost done. So you may recall, day two came to a very early end – like 3pm – since the kids needed a nap and then all the parks closed mega early for Mickey’s Bullcrap Halloween…

On Friday, we went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We made plans to go to Hollywood Studios on this day because my sister had arranged for us to attend a character brunch at 11.  Even though it was obviously totally for the boys, the whole family attended, which was sweet of them (to pay $35 a head for mildly decent food and a chance to meet Jake the Neverland Pirate, which is frankly only thrilling to humans under the age of about 8). When we walked in and approached the giant hat, we saw Donald Duck loitering around allowing pictures to be taken with him.  As this was the first (and…

We loaded the children, double stroller, suitcases, Halloween costumes, cases of Gatorade and Minute Maid fruit punch, boxes of fruit snacks and granola bars and cereal, and my trusty new birthday camera into the car on the morning of Wednesday, October 9, and we were off to Orlando.  (After two false starts and quick returns for forgotten items!) Eight . . . looooooong . . . hours . . . later . . . we were driving the back way into the Disney property, marveling at the Monorail and the quick glimpses of Disney castles and tippy tops of roller coasters that we could catch through the trees.  We pulled…