there's no place like home: Disney World

Oh my goodness. It appears Animal Kingdom held much excitement. I took A LOT of pictures. Hold onto your seats - here we go!

There's the tram again ... did I mention we arrived at each park before it opened? We had an agenda, people! No time to waste!

If you ask Mallory what/who she saw when we went to Disney World, her top 5 responses are (in no particular order):
Mickey Mouse
Cinderella's Castle
Tinkerbell (or something relating to Peter Pan ... Captain Hook, Tick Tock, etc.)
ANIMALS! (pronounced ah-nee-moles)
Dumbo ride

Tree of Life = Incredible

Mallory may have been catching bugs here.
Who knows??

She is not one to smile on cue (EVER), but she wanted to stand next to the rabbit alone.
"No danks, Momma ... my do it myself."

The guys ran ahead to grab a fast pass for Expedition Everest, so we headed on to Africa to get in line for the safari. Some random guy nicely offered to take Summer and my picture with the girls. He took three pictures no better than this ... one was off centered and he cut our heads off in the third ... I just had to laugh.

Waiting in line for the Kilimanjaro Safari

The safari was the highlight of Mallory's day.
FOR SURE.

CROCS.
And we're not talking shoes, friends.
(Can you click the picture? Several of them have their mouths open!)

Her face says it all. Yikes!

As we drove past, I said, "I could literally reach out and touch his neck."

The giraffe looked directly at me.
Okay, okay, I wasn't going to touch you. Relax.

This rhino walked up behind us and trotted across the road the second we passed him. I couldn't believe it. He ran over to a few other rhinos like, "Hey, what's up? That's like the 8th bus to pass through here today..."

Ouch.

We joked several times during the safari that the animals were being prompted to perform since people were watching ... the rhino running across the road, the giraffe snacking on some leaves within feet of our vehicle. Despite all of this, Mallory had apparently been holding out hope for gorillas. We exited the ride and she said to Casey, "Daddy, we didn't see any no gorillas (pronounced grow-was)." Well, Casey knows I give him endless credit for his incredible ability to distract Mallory at clutch moments to diffuse pouting or meltdowns and this was no exception. He took her over to see this waterfall hoping to avoid further talk of said grow-was.

We even got a great family photo out of the deal.

Then, as though someone pushed it from behind, out came a "GROW-WA"! (Little did we know this is where they appear in the exhibit.) I thought Mallory was going to explode. She proceeded to giggle uncontrollably. This was another one of my top 5 Disney Magical Moments.

This is a second one that walked out moments later.

From there we explored some of the walking trails. I had a little deja vu when we approached this aquarium and for good reason. I had taken pictures of some kiddos here before...

... so for nostalgia's sake, please enjoy two photos from Casey and my trip to Disney in 2007 (pre-children) with the Kane/Miller families.

Above: Finley, not quite 18 months

Below: Steve with Cole, 14 months
Wow, how time flies ... they will both be in kindergarten this fall!

Jump back to 2011...

Ooh, more fun! Face painting!

You would have thought Aubrey was being tortured. We all had to giggle. I have a feeling this is one of those pictures she'll see when she's 15 and say, "I can't believe you made me sit through that!"

Checking out some real ducks in the river:

Part of our amazing experience at Disney (with two girls under 3) can be chalked up to the fact that we didn't wait more than 20 minutes for anything ALL WEEK! Between fast passes and seemingly being in the right place at the right time, we continually marveled at our luck.

Waiting to get into The Lion King show.

Mallory thoroughly enjoyed all of the shows we saw. Last night at dinner she asked, "Can we go to The Lion Show? With the monkeys who swing on benches?" (There were gymnasts on trapezes, uneven bars, etc. - great show, so entertaining!)

Heat + face paint = hot mess. :)

Everest. Bring it!
I LOVE roller coasters!

After lunch we walked into the Finding Nemo show (NO WAIT!). Afterward we got Mallory her very own Nemo to go with the stuffed Dory she sleeps with every night.

A little Triceratops Spin (Dumbo-esque).

The girls were such go-getters all week. But they were no match for their beds. This day in particular, we tried to wake them after about 90 minutes of napping to swim in our condo pool, but they both whined and went back to sleep for another two hours! I guess you should also never wake a sleeping toddler!