Family Trip of a Lifetime - Epcot

During our planning, I felt a little overwhelmed with Epcot. I wasn't sure how the kids would react to it and I was excited to visit some of the countries, but not all. Like the other parks, we had a plan with Epcot. I made a b-line for Soarin' and got fast passes for everyone and then met up with everyone at another ride.

After grabbing the Soarin' tickets I found the kids in Innoventions playing video games. They could have stayed in there for hours.

Jonathan even played from the comfort of his stroller.

Who doesn't love Dory? She is one of my favorite Disney characters. Snapped this in front of the Nemo Ride.

Here we are starting the Finding Nemo Ride. One of the only times the boys got to ride a ride with their parents.

 After riding on some fun rides near the front of the park, it was time to go see "the world". The kids played a fun Perry the Platypus game while the rest of us took our time wandering the first part of the world. I was impressed with how amazing things were. Having just been to England, I loved that we saw that country first. The shops were so fun. Stuff we saw in England we saw in the shops there. Candy and biscuits you can't find here, you could find there. Amazing that they can do that! I LOVED wandering through the various countries! Once we caught up with the kids, we mostly just bypassed things and didn't stop.

We had a lunch reservation in Italy. I was SO excited because I went to Italy in 2010. I love Italy and hope to be able to go back one day. I loved this part of Epcot and could have stayed here longer.

Doge's Palace! I have been inside the real one in Venice and this looks pretty amazing! (From the water it faces the wrong direction though so that bugged me, but it was done amazingly well.)

A little Venice and a little Epcot. Seriously, LOVED this little bit of Italy in Florida. The shops were amazing. The people who worked there were from Italy. I bought some Murano glass beads. I LOVED it!

Lunch? Amazing. Most of us ordered pizza and it was amazing. For desert we got chocolate gelato. It was yummy.

Mom and dad have been to China twice - mom three times - so we visited China. This garden was cool.

These soldiers were only a few feet tall, but looking at them I could better imagine the real ones.

Cute Sarah posing with a Chinese statue.

I loved this - it was hanging on the wall in one of the buildings in China. The picture came out dark, but it says....."Hearing something 100 times is not as good as seeing it once." So very true!

Hyrum comes from Scandinavian descent. Here we are in Norway and he tried on his first and only pair of Mickey Ears. They were perfect. Too bad they stayed there.

I am still trying to perfect the take a picture of myself with my reverse camera on my phone. So I took several in sequence each worse than the last. I put my phone away and headed towards the exit. Dad caught up to me and said....did you catch me? I hadn't even noticed him in my frame. Clearly he was there....in several of my pictures. What a great dad, and what a fun memory.

Mom and dad were so excited for Test Track. It was closed for renovation and scheduled to re-open on October 1st - the day of Epcot's big anniversary. Unfortunately it was delayed for a month and we didn't know that so we scheduled a return just to ride that and were sadly disappointed. Oh well. Epcot was still cool.