Photos 183-186/365 (series: Chicago!)

Another family tradition: Chicago for the Fourth of July. I guess the good news about being home only 12 hours between trips is that really you don't have to unpack very much. Actually, we folded up all our Chicago clothes and left them on the bed before we left for Stratford, so when we got home from Stratford Sunday night we emptied the suitcases into the laundry bin and just replaced them wit the Chicago clothes. Toiletries stayed packed, and we were ready to go...to bed. 

Chicago is a slightly longer drive than Stratford for us, but both drives come with a variable that cannot be measured ahead of time. For Stratford that's the border crossing into Canada (sometimes those lines are loooooong), for Chicago it's the city traffic. Stratford won this year for ease of passage, Chicago was in rare form! 

Weather was great this year, especially on fireworks night. Fireworks for us in Chicago means going up on the rooftop, grilling delicious food and sipping delightful wine while watching the horizon just errupt with color all around us. We don't see any one display—that would mean crowds, more traffic, and less food—instead from our rooftop position we see dozens of displays all over the parts of the city. It's beautiful, and this year it was set against the backdrop of a far away but still approaching storm, and the lightning was stunning. About an hour after the sun went down, when we'd really had our fill and had a lovely time, the rain reached us and we dashed inside to enjoy the natural fireworks. 

Oh, and it's my dad's birthday. Happy birthday dad, and thanks for throwing such a wonderful party every year!

Photos 180-182/365 (series: Stratford!)

One of our favorite places to visit: Stratford, home of Canada's annual Shakespeare Festival. This is another family tradition going on seven years now, including the best old style motel with pool, Shakespeare and musicals, and ice cream every day from the sweetest little shop in town. This year the weather was perfect for swimming, and that's about it, other than seeing shows inside an air conditioned theater, that is. With a daily heat index in the triple digits (yes, even in Canada!), we weren't doing much of our usual wandering around town. Our 2018 line up? Shakespeare's Tempest, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Music Man. 

Photo 87/365: Disney diary day 9, headed home

Photo 86/365: Disney diary day 8

Our last full day. Tomorrow we will be sneaking in some pool play before packing up, enjoying one final meal at the resort, and heading home to chilly mud if we're lucky, cold slush if we aren't.

But today? Magic Kingdom take 3!

Since Epcot is our favorite park, you might wonder why MK for a third day? Well, there really is more to do there, plus Calvin was having so much fun with the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game that we thought we'd give him some more time to play. Once we knew we'd be here today we booked all three meals plus FastPasses for our favorite rides. And we decided to try our park morning, pool afternoon, park evening plan again. 

But fate and fortune had other ideas. Remember when I said that pin trading, aside from being built-in entertainment everywhere we went all week long, also gave us one very special, very magical extra experience at the end? Well here it is. After a second go at early hours breakfast with Pooh and Friends (a favorite of ours) we headed into Tomorrow Land for a final ride on the People Mover and Carousel of Progress (love!), and were headed back to Adventure Land when we spotted a cast member with lots—I mean lots—of pins. I suggested that we walk ourselves over there to take a gander at his pins, plus the bathroom was right there, too, so win-win. That pin trade turned into a fifteen minute visit about where we were from, what we'd done on our trip, what our plans were that day...and an invitation to be the Grand Marshals of the Festival of Fantasy Parade that afternoon. Yes. Grand Marshals. Um...pool afternoon, or Grand Marshal afternoon? Calvin picked the latter. 

So...hightlights from today???

Breakfast with Eeyore and friends (see what I did there?) at Crystal Palace, of course.

Playing Sorcerers throughout the park

Getting to say goodbye to our favorite Tomorrow Land rides

Amazing lunch at the Jungle Skipper Canteen 

Oh, and being the Grand Marshals of the Magic Kingdom parade! So, riding in the special car, waving at all the crowds gathered along the entire parade route, having our own private photographer for the duration of the parade plus some extra special "cast photos", and extra special FastPasses for the remainder of our evening. Awesome.

The entire day took on a whole new kind of magic for us. Following the parade we were relaxed and happy, enjoying our last dinner (back at Tony's), our last rides thanks to our special passes (more Splash! more Dwarfs! More Thunder! Plus, one last People Mover and even another Carousel). We ended the night, our last night, with a walk through a darkened park, and fireworks.

This was magic. This was heart warming, heart awakening, family time. Not just today, but the whole trip. So. Much. Magic.

Photo 85/365: Disney diary day 7

Epcot take 2!

At this point we've hit the downward slide of vacation. We've been to all the main Disney parks at least once each, so our remaining days are for tying up loose ends: a second chance at favorite activities, a first chance at any missed ones, and of course still trying to collect all those magic shots. Plus the spring breakers have joined us, so it will be busier from here on out.

Since we managed to do all we wanted to do at Animal Kingdom in one day, and squeezed all we wanted to do at Hollywood Studios into the same day as Universal, we were tasked with reorganizing the remainder of our trip last night, which we did online by changing meal FastPass+ reservations. We thought today that we would spend the morning in the park, come home after lunch to swim a little, then head back to the park for dinner. Since Epcot is pretty close to our resort (Caribbean Beach), this was definitely a viable plan, but when we got back the pool was closed due a water issue. Huge bummer. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that our son is so flexible. There was disappointment, but it didn't derail the day. We just headed back to the park early and took a second, and final, spin through his favorite ride (thankfully Figment is fairly line free).

Highlights from today:

Lunch at San Angel Inn Resataurante, in amidst twilit Mayan ruins. Delicious, and very moody.

A final dash through Test Track and climb through Spaceship Earth, plus two trips through Figment's Journey into Imagination, Calvin's favorite. 

But mostly, by far, dinner at Monsieur Paul in France, arguably the best meal we've had yet.