There's no room in our house for anything but Disney pictures

This is what 1,500 prints from Kodak Gallery looks like when they arrive on your doorstep.



This is what I had to deal with when I opened the boxes.



And these were all the envelopes that were in the larger envelopes that were in all the boxes.



So two weeks and about four hours of organizing later, I had them sorted. I separated all the batches first into piles for each park. Then, since there were four prints of almost every picture, I separated them into four stacks for each park, so that Jake's, Nick's, Nathaniel's and the family scrapbook would have its own set of pictures for each day of our trip.

Then each set of pictures went back into an envelope and into the appropriate scrapbook's showbox so they'll be in chronological order when I get ready to crop them. Here's the family box:



Friday night I got everything together that I needed to take to the all-day crop on Saturday, including the shoebox of pictures for the family book:



Looking at that stack of stuff, if you don't scrapbook you might be aghast: ALL THAT JUST TO CROP FOR ONE DAY? Yes. And that's only about half of what I take to the annual winter and summer weekend crops. It's hard to travel light when you scrapbook.

I cropped from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, and I got our plane trip to Orlando, all of Animal Kingdom and a few pages of Magic Kingdom finished.

I did about 24 pages ... here are a few samples, the first of which is the beginning of the plane trip:



I did four pages of the plane trip, since it was the boys' first time on a plane. Next up was our first day in a park, at Animal Kingdom:



Our character breakfast at Animal Kingdom:



And I'm including a map of each park, too, to help us remember where everything was.



DinoLand at Animal Kingdom:



Some of the beautiful animals we saw at Animal Kingdom:



And the boys' favorite ride there, Expedition Everest:



And a few more animals, because it WAS Animal Kingdom, after all.



It took me more than half the day just to get through that park. I did four pages of the plane trip, 12 pages of Animal Kingdom, and I still have to do the title page for the book. (I accidentally left the big Disney die cut I wanted to use on the title page at home, so I'll have to do it later.) Anyway, then I moved on to Day Two, Magic Kingdom.

If you're a scrapbooker and you plan on going to Disney, one thing I was adamant about doing was getting a group shot in one of the more iconic places in each park. At Animal Kingdom it was in front of the Tree of Life. At Magic Kingdom, it was in front of Cinderella's Castle. At EPCOT it was -- surprise! -- in front of the big ball thingie, and at Hollywood Studios it was in front of the big purple hat. That meant I could start each park's page in the books with a nice group photo that really epitomized the park. So far, I like the way it's working out:



You can tell I'm not an over-embellisher. I hardly do any decorative elements on my pages at all anymore. I have so many cute Disney things, though, that I might go back and add more once the album is all laid out and I can see the blank spots better. But for now I'm leaving it mostly up to the colors and pictures.



One of the last pages I worked on yesterday features the pictures of some of the things we did at Magic Kingdom that Jake enjoyed. We did Peter Pan's Flight and also stopped at a playground for kids his size. Since all the other pages I'll do for that park really focus on the big boys, I wanted to pay special attention to the Jakey Stuff we did that day.

And might I point out what an Interesting Choice Disney made when they gave their Peter Pan ride a red and turquoise motif when Peter Pan is green and orange? NOT AT ALL FRUSTRATING FOR US SCRAPBOOKERS, NO SIR.



And while I'm on the subject, an open letter to the sticker companies out there: MINNIE MOUSE WEARS RED-AND-WHITE POLKA DOTS. Every single Minnie Mouse sticker I have showcases her in pink-and-white polka dots, and I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. Those stickers are going to wreak havoc on my Minnie pages.

Anyway, I'll try to take you along as I make more progress on the album, but that certainly isn't going to happen this week, while I'm battling a nasty, nasty cold. (Fellow scrapbookers out there, isn't it horrible to have a runny nose while you're having to look down all day? It's the pits.) So onward and upward from here. Wish me luck!