We are home!!! I will need to go back and catch up, but just wanted to pop in and say hi

We got home at 2 AM and Chris and I are both exhausted. Chris went to work and it is all that I can do to keep my eyes open, but Colby wants his Mommy awake
I see that Jennifer had Virginia and while I don't know the detail...Congratulations!!!
Jen, how is your Dad. We are all worried.
Chris and I had a fantastic trip and the only thing missing was sleep

We enjoyed meeting everyone and look forward to doing it again sometime. There will be lots of photos and trip reports coming, but here is a bare bones post of the Magic the Chris and I received.
We just got back from a whirlwind weekend. Dh and I took a 4 day 3 night to WDW without our children. This was our first ever vacation without our 3 sons and it turned out to be sprinkled with pixie dust and full of magic.
Thursday night we did the
MNSSHP. We decided to collect autographs from the characters that we had not seen on our 23 day trip last summer. Late in the evening we went to see Tarzan, Jane and King Louie. I knew that King Louie cannot sign autographs, but I had made him a customized autograph page to put in our autograph scrapbook with his picture. There was not a line at that time. King Louie was so excited to see this page that he got on the floor and indicated that he wanted me to put a pen between his fingers. I had a little difficulty in figuring out exactly how he wanted it, but his handler helped and he cafefully signed his autograph page. DH took lots of pictures of this and I was totally in shock. This must be very rare and since we are avid autograph collectors it was a great way to end our first day
Day 2 was an Disney MGM Studios day. We were there for park opening, but since we had now spent 24 days in the parks without an "official dream" being won we didn't have any expectations. As we were walking out of Tower of Terror we bumped into a Dream Team member that we had talked with extensively on our previous trip. She had been assigned to chat with the park guests on the day that we met her and she had spent about 45 minutes telling us amazing stories of dreams that she had been lucky enough to award and things that she had seen. We also talked about New England as we were both from there. Anyway we bumped into her and she recognized us as we also recognized her. She was on her way to find a family that was opening the Beauty and Beast show and didn't have time to chat, but told us to find her later and told us the area that she was assigned to for the day. We walked away and decided to hit One Man's Dream as we had never been able to spend much time there on visits with our kids. Turns out we were having a very lucky day as the Dream Team was handing out Dream Fastpasses. We were so excited and DH hugged the poor girl that was handing them out I was so excited that I was literally shaking. Honestly we weren't planning on doing much that day as we planned to take an afternoon break before heading back for Fantasmic, but it didn't matter as we had won a dream
After winning the fastpasses there was no way that we could concentrate on the exhibits so we headed off to character search. while waiting for the Green Army Man to come out we saw our Dream Team friend and went to chat with her. Her and her partner had set up a bean bag toss game near Al's toy barn and they were awarding stickers to participants. Kids and adults alike were enjoying the game. AR is the name of the nicest Dream Team member that you could ever meet. Anyway, Ar and her partner we just chatting with us about our kids and their favorite characters, souvenier requests and other misc chit chat. When the Green Army Man came out we went to get his autograph and AR followed us over and asked if we would be interested in being the Opening Family for the late afternoon Indiana Jones show. Well of course we would be. We were supposed to meet her at Indy at 4:15 that afternoon. I cannot tell you how special we felt. I also must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to AR on both trips and I wasn't expecting or even hoping for a dream as I truly enjoyed listening to her stories. I highly recommend talking with the Dream Team or any other CM as they all have wonderful stories to tell and I really think that they feel just a special as we do when someone takes the time to listen AR is probably the most personable CM that I have ever had the privilege to talk to and truly the conversations were highlights of our trip. Now back to the dream. We ran into some friends from the DIS at the ABC commissary and they had fastpasses for Rockin Roller Coaster. Since we had the Dream Fastpasses we all headed off together. They got Tower of Terror Fastpasses on the way by. After Rockin Rollercoaster we headed to the exit area of TOT to wait for their fastpass time. We spotted a group of 4 Dream Team members on the Cast Only Stairway of TOT. We lingered there a bit wondering what Dream they were going to be giving out. After a little while they came out of that area and it turned out that AR was one of those members and they had just handed out the Pin/Lanyard sets at TOT. It was then that she apologized to DH and I as she was not able to award us the Indy opening as it was a different CMs job that afternoon. She said that she did have something else in mind and asked us to meet her in front of Muppets at 4 PM. So a few hours passed by and we met her as planned. She and her partner were upset about the Indy mixup. We explained that we didn't care and had thoroughly enjoyed talking to them, no worries. She then informed us that She and the rest of the dream team had combined efforts and put together a little package for us. They had remembered exactly which character's each of our sons liked and had a trading pin for each of them. They had also found the Aztec coin that my son had requested. Someone from the dream team threw in a 3 plastic coins from the Pirate and Princess party and AR and her partner had selected a year of a million dreams picture frame for DH and I. Needless to say we were blown away. This was by far a better Dream than winning a Fastpass because we could see all the time, energy and thought that was put into it. She told us that we were a very special couple/family and that she wanted to celebrate that. AR if you ever read this I cannot express in words how happy you made DH and I and our 3 boys. Thank You!!!
Saturday was our day for AK. We got to the park a bit later than we would have liked, but we had been to breakfast with a group of DIS friends so being late was so not an issue. Anyway we got fastpasses to KS then headed over to Everest. We had planned to do the Single rider line as the regular line was 40 minutes. We walked up and DH thinking he was a funny guy demanded that we be seated together, Immediately. The CMs looked at him and laughed. The started up a conversation with a wonderful CM named Eric. Eric has been on the Everest Team since opening and he was so knowledgable. Having rode the ride before I asked why the sequences occur in the order that they do. I found it strange that you approach the torn up track, the see the shadow sequence that shows the Yeti ripping up the track. I think it should be the other way around, but what to I know. Eric explained that there was more to the sequence than that, it turns out that when you meet the yeti towards the end that that is the actual scene that is depicted in the shadow scene. If you weren't traveling so fast you would be able to see another set of tracks to the side of the Yeti. Obviously we had never noticed it. Eric then offered to take us to the Control Tower for a tour. More Pixie Dust for us. The control tower has video screens showing every section of the ride. They showed us the Yeti scene and sure enough there is a second set of track there. They also showed us how the tracks switch and some other very cool mechanical things. After our tour we were escorted to the front of the line and could choose any row we wanted. Eric also explained that Joe Rodi designed the entire ride around row 9. Row 9 has the best view and the best positioning throughout the ride so row 9 is what we chose. He also suggested that if you lean as far forward as you can, nearly laying your head in your lap during the part of the ride that goes backwards you will have a heightened coaster experience. Boy was he right!!! It felt like we went through an inversion, but in reality it wasn't even close. After our ride we hunted Eric down and thanked him for the information, tour and riding tips. He then handed us fastpasses to go back on and told us to try to hold our arms straight out in front of us and lift our feet off the floor during the helix section. So back on we went. Let me tell you that I could not hold my arms out straight or keep my legs up as the force was so strong. So we had a magical moment and now you all know a few secrets of Everest so I hope that we are spreading the Magic Too.
Now I have plenty of laundry to do and lots of attention to give. I don't think that Chris and I will be getting away alone anytime in the forseeable future as my parents are completely worn out from having the kids for 4 straight days. It seems they discovered that being a full time parent was much different than they had remembered and while the kids were well behaved they kept them running

Mom said that it will take her a month to get her house back in order. Maybe she'll understand now why my house is never in pristine condition

I think we all learned new appreciations for each other. While we missed the kids and they missed us it was a very nice weekend for us all
