I gained four pounds, and none of it can be blamed on a funnel cake.

When we last spoke, I mentioned that I wanted to pick the girls up from school and take them to Disney World. This was just my way of telling you that I was about to pick the girls up from school and take them to Disney World. Jeff was there for a sales meeting, and because the girls had a four day weekend, hooking up in Orlando made sense.

David Sedaris has taught me a lot of things, but one of the most memorable is this: No one wants to hear about your travel stories. No one wants to know that our flight was delayed to the extent that we were going to miss our connecting flight, meaning we would be at least a day late to Orlando. No one wants to hear that I had to pick the girls up earlier than I wanted and that we had to run like jerks who run through the airport and blashen blashen blashen ofdiuvhdvfkneipr98yshoa.

When we arrived in Orlando on Thursday night, Jeff picked us up from the airport and broke the news to the girls that they would be sharing a bed during the first night of the trip. To Harper, it suddenly didn’t matter that we were in Orlando. It didn’t matter that Jeff had a huge stack of snacks waiting for us in the hotel room. What mattered is this: Apparently, Meredith is a kicker. A KICKER.

(When Meredith was in kindergarten, the art teacher wrote her name on the back of one of her projects. Instead of writing “Meredith” she wrote “Meredlo”. It’s Harper’s favorite misspelling EVER, and sleeping with Meredlo is not hashtag how Harper does.)

I shared a bed with Meredlo on Thursday, and there was no kicking. The End.

Because the temperature was below freezing in St. Louis this morning and because freezing St. Louis people don’t want to hear about Florida, I’ll keep this short.

On Friday, we went to the Magic Kingdom, and the sky was amazing.

(Please know that castle cleaning crews were cleaning the castle and I really needed them to move the crane so I could take some decent photos, but they wouldn’t. So I didn’t. I did, however, almost get run over by at least 3,291 strollers that carried children who should have been walking. Let me just say this: If you have a child who is over the age of four and that child is perfectly capable of walking, please don’t rent a stroller. Your eight year old may be tired and cranky, but that doesn’t mean she needs wheels. There are other kids (and adults, for that matter) who need the stroller/wheelchair space. Don’t take up more room than you need. Someone please change the subject because I could go on and on about this and I’m starting to not like myself.)

On Friday evening we went to the new hotel, and it was a place where no one had to share a bed unless they wanted to.

Saturday was for Universal Studios, and Hogwarts was breathtaking.

My only recommendation? Buy ONE butterbeer. There is a good chance that the thought of butterbeer is much better than the actual butterbeer. And maybe you’re the only person in your party who really likes the butterbeer so you end up drinking most of the butterbeer because you don’t want to waste money and then you end up feeling really sick. Like, so sick that you are unable to go on rides because the thought of vomiting in public terrifies you. I’m 43. I know.

On Sunday, we went to an outlet mall and purchased absolutely nothing and then we went back to the hotel where Jeff and the girls swam and I watched the end of one of the Twilight movies and worked on a cardigan. That evening we went to Downtown Disney and ate at the Rainforest Cafe. Also, I made out with a statue.

Here’s the thing. If you give me a statue, there’s a good chance that I’ll make out with it. It’s hashtag how I do.

On Monday we checked out of the hotel and drove to Cocoa Beach to spend some time with the Atlantic Ocean.

At 6:40 we jumped on a plane and flew back home. After we went to bed, it began to snow. School was canceled. I cleaned out a cabinet and a closet, made fake steak veggie burritos, and set up an appointment with a new dentist.

(Edited to add: Thanks to Beth’s curiosity, I did some research and I now know that the statue with whom I was making out is a statue of Patrick Kavanagh, a colorful Irish poet who died of bronchitis in 1967. The statue is outside of Raglan Road, an Irish pub named after one of Kavanagh’s poems. Thanks, Beth!) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>