10 Lessons Learned from Disney World

1. When you get a week of three daughters getting along perfectly (no squabbling! plenty of sharing and volunteering to hang out with each other!), you feel absolutely blessed (and you live in that moment!).

2. (Practical tip alert.) When it's announced that the park will stay open an extra hour (as it did for us, until midnight, at Magic Kingdom) go back to where the line for princess photographs and autographs was an hour-and-a-half long earlier in the day. Go an hour before the park closes (when, presumably, most of the little kids are exhausted) and you can see the princesses much more quickly. It was wonderful.

3. Waffles are always great for breakfast. Mickey Mouse-shaped waffles are even better. And Mickey Mouse-shaped waffles...arriving on a room-service cart...are even BETTER!

4. "Roll Tide" is some sort of universal greeting among strangers at a theme park.

5. Don't get in a huff about food prices inside the park. You WILL pay $8 for a hot dog. Deal with it.

6. Take as many photographs as possible. And then take some more.

7. If you are wondering what can make a five-year-old, thirteen-year-old, seventeen-year-old, and forty-one-year-old turn into blubbering messes of "Awww, she's so pretty," and "Aww, that's so sweet," the answer is: Tinkerbell, Belle, Princess Aurora, and Cinderella live and in-person, and giving those girls (and one grown-up) real, live hugs.

8. If you have an eleven hour drive ahead of you, leave at 2 in the morning when everyone is still asleep. Your kids will wake up two states away and you will only listen to, "How much longer?" for a couple of hours. (And you can handle that.)

9. (Practical tip alert.) Use Fast Passes.

10. It's never too late to reconnect with your childhood. And it's never too late to connect with your own children.

(Full photo recap soon. I promise.)