Great Thing Number 1001 about Homeschooling...

We get to go to Disney on the "first day of school" for our county.  Of course, we already started back to full school last week, so it's only fair that we took today off :-).  As a total fluke, our pastor happened to be singing with the Dapper Dans today, so we literally bumped into him coming into the park and leaving.  The kids always play so cool about seeing him when we are there, but you KNOW that's the first thing they tell their daddy about when we get home ;-).

 In a pleasant turn of events, Scott was delightful all day long...which was wonderful since my back has been messed up for 3 weeks now, and I almost thought I'd need a wheelchair to survive today.

 Those are the kids in the last two rows.  Clearly Sari doesn't love Thunder Mountain nearly as much as she thought she did.

 The Carousel is a favorite.  I have to say, I love taking pictures of my kids on this ride since one of the programs I taught at Disney took guests into the area where they hand paint the horses. 

 Remember how Scott was delightful...well Mimi?  Not so much.  She had her heart set on buying the Merida "barbie" doll.  People have been telling her how much she looks like Merida since before Brave ever came out.  The girls at summer camp even called her Merida instead of her real name.  So she has a great affinity for this character.  But alas, the entire Walt Disney World property is SOLD OUT of Merida.  Since in her mind's eye that was the whole reason for going to Disney today, she was definitely out of sorts the rest of the day.

We were literally leaving the park just minutes before the flag lowering ceremony.  I've never seen it before, and probably wouldn't have today, except that the Dapper Dans were there.  Doug said he understood if we took off especially in light of the thunderstorm rolling in.  Well, it was a TOTAL God thing that we stayed.  They cut the ceremony short, and we bolted as soon as it was done.  We got to the monorail just as the first drops were starting, and by the time we were on board (by the skin of our teeth, we were probably the last people to board), the sky had opened with sideways falling rain.  It was intense.  When we got to the Ticket and Transportation Center, it was still raining very, very hard, and even more importantly, it was lightening a LOT.  So we stayed on the concourse for a few minutes, and then as the rain started to lighten, we made a quick walk for it (Mythbusters says you actually get wetter by running, LOL).  When we reached the tram boarding area, the rain had almost stopped, and by the time we boarded our tram it had completely stopped.  If we had NOT watched the flag ceremony, we would have been 6 minutes sooner, and probably would have been on a tram and walking in the parking lot in the middle of a HUGE storm with lots of lightening.  God is SO good!