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Autumn decor notwithstanding, fall is taking its sweet time coming to these parts to stay--we've had a few nice days, and mornings/evenings are pretty pleasant, but the highs are still hanging out in the upper 80Fs with no big dips in sight. 86F on Halloween? Sheesh. Still, we've been getting out and about a bit more, which means photos!

Our Disney World passes expired Saturday, sadly. And odd as it sounds to everyone who doesn't live in Orlando, when our passes expire we're usually a bit tired of the place and so we take some time off before renewing. We might wait even longer and do LEGOLand and/or Universal this time instead. But before our WDW passes expired we figured we should make one more visit, so Friday I took the day off work and we went to the Magic Kingdom.

Some Buzz Lightyear action.

Space Mountain loading area. So far only Hermione will ride this with me, but she likes it a lot!

Amy crossing the barrel bridge on Tom Sawyer Island.

Fort Langhorn. I don't know what that face is about.

Big Thunder Mountain!

Apparently this was Hallie's first time riding BTMRR, though I could have sworn she'd been on it before! She looks to be enjoying it here, but apparently she got scared on the next part and has sworn it off for a year or two. :)

Obligatory Carousel ride.

And the highlight of our visit--as we were exiting the Carousel, Hermione spotted this little guy perched on the railing right next to the exit. A ground dove, juvenile from the look of the fuzzy feathers, just hanging out oblivious to all the people walking by. I hope its mom was still around somewhere!

Saturday was hot again, and I had an afternoon commitment, so we didn't want to roam too far. We went to a nice little neighborhood park we'd discovered a while back, with a lovely boardwalk through the woods.

My commitment for the afternoon was a photoshoot--a guy (British, fantastic accent) got in touch for a session with him and his wife, saying they've talked about doing it for years and never gotten around to it. It was such a good time! We met at a hidden gem of a park I know near downtown, and they were just a lot of fun to work with. Plus it was late afternoon and the light was quite nice. I don't usually share my paid work here, but I was a bit proud of this one:

Yesterday we initially planned to go up to Deland, to hit a state park and a little doll store the girls like. But then we saw that the little mineral and gem museum on the college campus there is having a Halloween event for kids next weekend that sounds fun, so we decided to wait and go up there then instead. As a plan B, we headed out to the Tibet-Butler Nature Preserve near Disney. It was a great morning for a walk!

The bees were hard at work.

Darwin, a resident tortoise.

Another day, another boardwalk.

Neat wildflowers.

Unidentified little bird, probably a warbler of some type. I'm no good with the so-called LBBs (Little Brown Birds).

Water lily.

The trails at this park have a great carpet of really short, fine grass. Like nature's carpeting.

See?

Then we went to Downtown Disney--er, Disney Springs now, sorry. At the hat store the girls liked modeling.

Amy finally gets to lose the splint in a few more days. Can't wait!

Doesn't she look sweet? Yeah, this was about 3 minutes before a fairly epic meltdown when we told her we wouldn't buy the thing she wanted but she could ask for it for Christmas. She did not take it well. :)