My favorite park

I'm having a Blogger moment; a day, really....I've tried to load pictures today no less than half a dozen times only to have it tell me to try again later.

Apparently Blogger is of the mindset that stay at moms sit around, drink wine, watch bad reality TV and still have time to spare and hit the "try again" button repeatedly.

Here are some pictures that did manage to make it. We were able to spend almost 2 full days at Epcot which made my little heart happy as the last time we were there (6 years ago) it was only a quick stop to check out the "golf ball" and have a princess breakfast at the castle in Norway. (which I highly recommend if you have little princesses of your own:)

We spent a good portion of each day in "Future World" - (look, can't you see all the fun pictures of Nemo and Friends, Mission to Mars, kids lying down on the grass looking at the monorail, Mouse Gears and Test Track? Oh right, they're not here:(

But, here are some neat pictures from "The Countries" as most people refer to them. I guess the official moniker is "World Showcase", but "the countries" seems to work as well.

Our goal was to reach China (more on that in a minute), then Italy for dinner. On the way we ran into this fellow in Mexico!

This picture won't make quite as much sense without the preceding pictures (grrrrrrrrrrrrr!), but our family did a Kim Possible mission that took us to China. I tried to do a link-up to a Kim Possible page in case you don't know who she is, but my link did a Blogger on me and I really have no patience left. So, in a nutshell, Kim Possible is a cartoon American cheerleader who is also a secret agent that saves the world from evil Dr. Drakken. It was one of Disney's better shows and the only thing that makes me feel a little bit better about it no longer being in production is that I seem to be able to catch a Phineas and Ferb episode most any time of the day or night.

Anyhoo, back to Epcot....the smart people at Disney have created a Kim Possible scavenger hunt where each family can pick up a "cell phone" at a designated location, then move onto an assigned country. We were delegated to China, where we had to search for clues in the various shops and landmarks. It was quite a creative game and at the end we "completed our mission." The mission of keeping 3 kids happy with 1 cell phone/activator proved to be a challenge greater than defeating Dr. D, but we soldiered on. Once we were done we were instructed to deposit our device into this box.

I snapped this picture as we were leaving China....isn't it beautiful out there??

And a picture of China....

We came upon Germany soon after, where we found this lovely girl!

One of her woodland friends tried desperately to avoid my husband's shoe (he was oblivious to the whole thing - my husband, that is; the squirrel was quite aware and frantic.)

I think this is a picture from Germany, but I'm not completely sure. Any of you Disney types be sure to correct me if you know!

Outside the Via Napoli restaurant in Italy, where we were waiting for our dinner reservations...

And it was VERY worth it.....(hello, old friend treadmill - I'm sure we will have many early morning meetings together...)

Every night (weather permitting) Epcot puts on a spectacular lights and fireworks show. Here is the grand finale, viewed from the French pavilion.
(Ooo la, la - don't I sound exotic??!!)

Bravo, Epcot. Walt Disney had quite the vision when he thought out the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow."