Okay, last vacation post. It's starting to feel like homework, but since I started, I must finish.
Saturday morning we were " up and at em" at the crack of dawn . We finished packing, loaded the van, said good-bye to the condo, and headed out to our last magical day of fun ....Disney's Animal Kingdom.
We followed the drove of people into the park, and headed to our first ride, Kilimanjaro Safari. An open air vehicle tour through the savannas of Africa.
Taking a break, eating "the mix"....clearly a vacation staple :)
The kids enjoyed Dinoland. Digging for bones, and Dinosaur the ride were a few of their favorites.
A quick pic with a palm tree on the way out. Saying good-bye to 84 degrees and sunny was oh so sad.
All in all we had another magical day. We were on the road by 3pm, homeward bound. 
We drove north until we were somewhere south of Atlanta, Georgia, where we stopped for dinner at a local Denny's. We drank our pot of coffee, and then drove until 4 am, when neither one of us could keep our eyes open any longer. The drive home sure isn't as exciting as the drive down! We pulled over at a reststop somewhere in northern Kentucky, and slept for about an hour or so. A couple hours later we stopped for breakfast in southern Indiana.
At breakfast, it began to rain, and we were alerted that we would soon be on the trail of a big ice storm the rest of the way north. Thankfully we stayed ahead of the storm, and it didn't get really bad until we got off the highway. We made it home safely, and quickly emptied out the van before heading over to pick up Ellery and Phoebe from Tim's folks. We were all really eager to see our Elles again. It felt really weird not having her along with us, but it was a good decision to leave her. We would have not been able to keep the pace we did with her along, nor would she remember it anyway. Thank you to my MIL and Cara for watching her!
The kids had 2 snow days upon returning home, and then sickness began filtering through our family again. Strep throat, ear infections and the pukies are hard to get on top of when there are 7 people to filter through. Fortunately, we are starting to get on top of our game again over here.
All in all, we had a wonderful week chock full of memories... and we hope to return again someday, when Ellery is no less than 40 inches tall, of course :)
For my own record keeping...
-taking a back pack w/snacks and lunch worked really, really well
-bringing along pre-made casseroles and sub sandwhiches in the cooler made meals a lot easier when we got there.
-Disney seemed to be the slowest on the weekend.
-next time I would take more restaurant gift cards along
-non Disney members can not get into the park early, no matter wha the literature says.
-doing Disney every other day worked well. It was nice to have a day to sleep in and relax in between.
-having a plan of attack before we got to the park really helped
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