Earlier this year, when our son Mark was asked to speak at the Southern Association of Orthodontists conference in Orlando, Jenny and Nancy began planning a family visit to Walt Disney World. They booked adjacent rooms at the Grand Floridian, chose a meal plan, bought tickets to the parks, and made airline reservations. Mark and I wrote the checks!

In September Delta cancelled our direct flight from Huntsville to Orlando. Instead we planned to catch up with Mark, Jenny, Jackson (6), and John Michael (3) in Atlanta and fly the rest of the way on the same airplane. So on November 5th, we got up before the crack of dawn, hitched a ride to the airport with Nancy's friend Myra, and began our 5-day Disney adventure.

As any visitor to one of the Walt Disney theme parks knows, you just can't do it all. But you can try! On Thursday all 6 of us spent the day in the Magic Kingdom. The big picture above was taken on that first morning. Since Mark had to attend his conference on Friday and Saturday, he was not with us for our return to the Magic Kingdom on Friday nor our trip to the Hollywood Studios on Saturday. Sunday we all traveled to the Animal Kingdom, which I really liked. The safari, with it's wide variety of animals and plants was awesome.

We did run into a lot of characters, especially during our meals. Nancy and I took the boys to the Epcot Center for our Friday evening meal. The kids really did get a kick out of seeing all these Disney characters up close and personal.

We returned to Huntsville on the 10th. We did get home about 5 hours ahead of our luggage, but that failed to spoil what was easily a fun time.