The morning of day seven found us on our own. And with a lot of attitude.

Oh, yeah.

Gram, Gramps, and the Gains were on their way to Animal Kingdom for breakfast at the Tusker House, so we went back to the place none of the four Faulks have ever grown weary of so far — the Magic Kingdom. I was concerned that so much time there might burn us out on the park for good, but Emma, overhearing my concerns told me, “Oh, don’t worry. We will NOT get burned there!” And sure enough, we never did.

We hit up Space Mountain as soon as the gates opened, and Emma did a great amount of interpretive dancing to Tomorrowland’s background music while waiting for Papi to complete his rocket ship voyage. (I took video of it. It was spectacular.) From there, we went on to Peter Pan, Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Magic Carpets, and (yes) Small World. You know, I think we rode Peter Pan just as much as we did Small World this year, likely because of their proximity to one another. That was fine by me because the proximity also had us close to Columbia Harbor House (yes!) where we went for lunch. Right after lunch, we ran across two ESPN hosts taping segments in Liberty Square for the upcoming ESPN the Weekend shows. I had no idea who they were (of course), but Wes was super excited. (And sure enough, once we arrived back home, we saw the exact same segment we had watched being taped! Should’ve walked behind the cameras and made crazy faces…)

We spent the afternoon browsing the stores on Main Street while Ana snoozed in her stroller and Emma continued dancing like there was no tomorrow. At one point, she was called over to the Main Street Fire Station to ring the bell during the Block Party. Is it called the Block Party? It’s not the big parade but the smaller parade that happens more than once during the day, where the characters are on floats that look like presents and there are people walking around on stilts and… wow, I’m really showing my Disney ignorance because I have no idea what this thing is called. But I can sing the song word for word. Does that count for anything? Anyway, Emma enjoyed having everyone wave at her as they went by. And Ana enjoyed sleeping through the whole thing, I’m sure.

From there, we got on the monorail to Epcot, where Wes and I were going to meet Gram and Gramps, hand the girls over to them, and go on to our dinner at the brand new La Hacienda de San Angel. Before our reservation time, we were able to ride Spaceship Earth (or “the big ball!” as Emma calls it), watch Captain EO (which was eighties fabulous), and go through Journey into Imagination (which was much less terrifying to us than it has been to Ana and Emma in the past). We stopped by Club Cool to drink disgusting mutants of Coca Cola, which made me even more ready for a REAL Coke at the restaurant. Ready for a Coke and for this…

Mmmm…

After that, I swore that I couldn’t eat another bite. Until we walked to Germany and went in the infamous chocolate shop. And came out with this…

A girl’s always got room for chocolate covered caramel, y’all.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though, because before the chocolate caramel (mmmm…), we ran into these characters in China…

(I think Ana was in her stroller being belligerent.) They were so sweet that I was half-tempted to go with them and forget date night, but seeing as how reservations at the Coral Reef still awaited them and would lead to this kind of craziness…

… it was probably best that we went on our way alone. (Love the pizza sauce all over Em’s face!) Besides, if we had gone with them, how would Ana have cornered Uncle Chris on the bus back to Port Orleans and had a long, long conversation full of, “Guess what?”s then followed by statements of fact, feeling, or random thought that required no response at all from anyone but the one asking “Guess what?” Exactly. We would have robbed Uncle Chris of that experience!

Wes and I continued walking through the World Showcase then decided to go on back to Port Orleans earlier than planned because he was still feeling under the weather. We stopped at the food court at Port Orleans so that I could use one of our few remaining snack credits on another chocolate milkshake. A girl’s always got room for a chocolate milkshake, y’all.

Before we knew it, we were back in the room, packing bags and getting ready for (sniff, sniff) morning checkout. Just one more morning of magic left…