Day 4 -- Epcot

Epcot is so enormous that it is hard to see everything in just one day, but we tried our best. Yes, another very cold day, especially when the sun went down. We lost Andrew 3 times here--I know, I deserve the "Mother of the Year Award"! But, all in all, it was a good day.

First off we went to the Spaceship Earth ride. I have to say, they have totally revamped this and it was a HUGE improvement. At the end, each person even gets to personally choose what their "future" will look like based on their likes and dislikes. Again SO much better than what they had before.

The kids practiced a fire drill in a pretend house, how to escape, etc. They wanted to do this over and over. This was really good because whenever we try to make our emergency plans in FHE, everyone ends up in tears and refuses to talk about it! Thank you Disney for doing it better than we could!

On to the fish: this is where we noticed Andrew missing the first time. After days at parks, I had fallen into the expectation that with 4 adults and 8 kids between us, everyone kept an eye on everyone and followed each other wherever we went. Andrew is an observer and had somehow missed the fact that we left. Obviously I missed the fact that he was not with us. I ran back to our last stop (the fire drill place) and there he was tears streaming down his face, holding a nice old lady's hand. Whew! Luckily it was only a few minutes. This would only happen two more times this day! Poor Drew. Bad Mom.

Nemo ride was cool--I think the dream of being a marine biologist still exists somewhere deep inside me and resurfaces every time I'm around large tanks of fish! I love them.

We went on Soarin', which is always a fun ride and the kids loved it! We met with Mickey, a special meeting for Disney cardholders, which took some time. By this time it was already after 1 p.m. and I was anxious to get onto the countries, my favorite part of Epcot.

I neglected to mention that before we left I made the kids' autograph books. My kids love to get the characters' autographs and we got a lot this time around! I personalized each book the kids' pictures and laminated the front. I even put a Passport section at the back for each of the 11 countries we visited at Epcot (thanks to Todd for helping me on this part!). The kids loved them, I saved money by doing it myself and I have to say I was down-right proud of how they turned out!

The countries were awesome and I can't even begin to choose a favorite. They were all so beautiful and unique in their own way. What a great world we are blessed with.

In Japan, there was a lady who demonstrated candy-making. Out of 6 demonstrations, she chose Alli to be her last. Alli chose to have her make a zebra and the cute Japanese lady's hands quickly got to work. Only about 60 seconds later, she had an amazing looking zebra made out of candy for Allison! We watched several of the other animals she made and were amazed at her talent--there's nothing she can't do! I don't think she spoke much English, however, as she kept repeating the same random English words, intermixed with Japanese, over and over. Watch below:


We stopped in Germany for some pretzels, France for some great pastries, America for a funnel cake and the U.K. for some fish and chips--hhmm, maybe that's where the extra 5 lbs. came from . . . All yummy food regardless!

The day ended with, how else? Fireworks! They were of course amazing and I was thankful once again for the rented van as all the kids quickly fell asleep on our way home.