And E is for Emma

When I was a teacher, before Brian was born, I became friends with Joelle. She and I taught together, went through our first pregnancies together and delivered within 16 days of each other. Despite the distance, when she moved to PA, and when we eventually moved to FL, we have remained close friends. We share the same values and are even homeschooling our children together - just 1000 miles apart! E week saw us take a break from our studies for a couple of afternoons to meet up with our friends Abby, Emma and Baby Ian.
So when I heard that Joelle and the family were going to be in Orlando, I just knew we had to take advantage of this opportunity to get our kids together.

I'd like to say we went to Epcot to go along with "E" week, but we didn't. On Wednesday we met up at Disney Hollywood for some Disney fun. We began our adventure at Playhouse Disney where "Casey" introduced us to his friends, Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Donald and Goofy.
Colin loved pointing out "Mouse" every time he saw either Mickey, Minnie, or mouse ears - which are plentiful at Disney as you might imagine!
Sean, taking in the "city" scene. There were a number of cool visual effect (ooh, look - an "E" word!) sets around Disney Hollywood.
Normally Brian, and even Colin, are freaked out by the characters at Disney - but not by Lighting McQueen and Mater! This time Sean was not so excited (see, another "E" word!) about meeting these characters.
We went into the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. Everything in the playground was larger than normal so it gave the effect ("E" word) of being small. Brian and Abby loved playing by the big Play-Doh, because it would shoot out water at them!
Then we tried to find a place to eat (another "E" word - see we were still learning!). We stopped by the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater, but they were booked for the rest of the night (by 6 p.m. nonetheless). We had to get a photo op in the old-time car outside before we headed to the ABC Commissary.
We ended our evening in front of Mickey's Fantasia hat and were counting down the hours until we met again on Thursday.
Thursday afternoon we met up with our friends at their resort, Shades of Green. We parked the car and waited to take the bus over to Magic Kingdom. The kids ran around while waiting.
Once we got dropped off we got one more picture of kids (except the littlest guys). It was a good thing I got this picture since a couple hours later 3 of these 4 children were covered in chocolate ice cream!
We headed over to AdventureLand where we took a magic carpet ride.
Afterwards we headed over to the Enchanted ("E" word!) Tiki Room where Emma spent the entire show in her mom's arms - she's not a big fan of "mean" characters, and all of the loud noise scared her. We met up with Joelle's husband, Brad and headed out to Mickey's Toontown Fair where Brian, Sean & Emma rode Goofy's Barnstormer not once but twice - Abby went the first time around, but decided she didn't want to go on it again. This is how I left Colin when I went to take the bigger kids on the roller coaster. Can you say tired little man?
After a fun day at the park, we made our way to the special seating area to get ready to watch the fireworks. We had some time to kill, so the kids hammed it up.

It's kind of hard to tell, but that swishy-swirly light on the right side of this picture was Tinkerbell as she flew from Cinderella's castle right over our heads. I told you these were special seats!We watched an amazing fireworks display set to Disney music. We oohed and aahed at the light show that took place over our heads.
At the end of the night we said good-night to Mickey and good-bye to our friends. Abby and Emma skipped over the letter "E" week and did the letter "F" for Florida. Maybe we can go see them when we study "P" for Pennsylvania!