Our Make A Wish Trip to Disney!

Here is my Happy Mouseketeer!

AND

This trip was most definitely a “DREAM COME TRUE” for Alexa. She was in heaven. She even made up her own song with those words (drean come true) in it! They play music all through Magic Kingdom with that phrase in it so it was subconsciously in her head. It was seriously the most amazing thing to see her as happy as she was the entire trip.

While it was a wonderful Make-A-Wish there were a few This-is-a-nightmare times to tell. Read on for the now funny, but not so funny then stories!

WE ARE OFF! Happy Easter!

Hello everyone! I know alot of you are excited to hear all about our Disney Make A Wish Trip so I decided it needed its own page as there is SO much to tell!

I don’t even know where to begin! But here goes.

The kids were SOOO excited to go, as you can imagine it was like a 3 month countdown! The limo arrived promptly at 7:45 for our first family vacation. Usually vacation is Jason and I. I really don’t think travelling with 3 small children is exactly a “vacation” but going to Disney is certainly going to be hard to top! And for a first family trip certainly an AMAZING place to go.

The kids wore the Ident-A-Kid tags I made the entire time we were away! They kept reassuring us that they would show it to an adult if they got lost. I felt good knowing that much. (While we were there a little go was lost and we watched in horror as security people EVERYWHERE looked for her. Her name was Ashley. it was really late at night too. Im sure she was found but my kids were horrified as we explained what was going on) Needless to say they kept close to us the entire trip.

This is Alexa as the limo arrived to pick us up!

Here we are ready to go!

Its not everyday you get to go in a Limo! The kids Loved it. Alexa loved the pretty lights that changed colors, and Noah kept saying this is our new cool car. Amber just liked controlling the “dance” music. It was really cool that Make-A-Wish provided our transportation. Talk about royalty. Its just the beginning…..

Here we are at the airport boarding the plane.

Alexa is PETRIFIED of heights. Now think 3 kids on a 3 hour plane ride. One who freaks about everything (aka Alexa) one who can’t sit still for more the 2 minutes (aka Noah) and an angel (aka Amber). Well to our surprise Alexa chooses the window seat! AND OPENS it to watch the entire time! Bye New Hampshire!!!!

THE ARRIVAL

We arrive at Disney, and there is a person there waiting for us from Give Kids the World. They work with families from Make A Wish and provide accommodations for families. They have an amazing recreation area for families to go and stay and even eat FREE.

The “Candy House” is where you get a buffet for Breakfast & Lunch. e food is amazing! This place is run on volunteers! Just amazing.

This includes all you can eat ice cream ALL day. Here is the outside of the ice cream place.

Holy pack on the pounds! Its sponsored by Friendly’s Ice Cream! You can get cup, cones, frappes, floats, and of course Banana splits.

We arrive at Give Kids the World and its themed like Candy Land! Way cool. They have a village called Amber Land!! Cool huh? So we get there and they have Easter Baskets for the kids as well as a ton of other cool stuff!

Here are the kids with the “goods” and this is the ceiling in the room! Its like a big top circus in there! The whole park is full of cool places, and activities for families and kids.

They have a carousel outside to ride as many times as they want,

mini golf, movie theater, train rides, boat games, and HUGE train set that you control what trains go where, arcade, pool, oh my word endless. They have a castle the has gold stars ALL over the ceiling. There is a star for EVERY child who has visited there! SO cool, and heartbreaking to see how many children are up there. You get this mazing Make-A-Wish and everyone thinks “How Lucky” but this ticket comes at such a high price-your childs heath.

Ok so here is the ceiling of stars-there are a ton more but this is what I go a photo of.

Here is Alexa adding her name to a star for the ceiling. Its a cool process. The child writes theie name on the star with a “magic” pen (aka magic sharpie marker) and puts it in the “Star Fairy box” . You close the lid and a fairy comes on the screen and talks to you. The box shakes as the fairy takes the star to put up o the wall. Alexa was fascinated by this. As an adult I have to admit it was very cool!

Then you get to make a “sweet dreams, and wish pillow”. The child gets to “make it” and each night inside the fairly leaves a special “toy” (given to the parents secretly from Give Kids the World staff) each night for the child to wake up to!

Here they are each making their pillow. Fairy bubbles come out as the pillow is made and plays magical music.

Here they are in the castle Queen Alexa, and Queen Amber, And King Noah

They also have tons of cool things throughout the park.

Talking trash cans and Big Chocolate bars-YUMMY! and EEEK! Lots of Lizards! Hated that.

OFF TO THE HOTEL

Oh boy. Well let me start by saying, usually we would have stayed at the Give Kids the World resort. They were full so put us up in a 5 star hotel called The Beach Club, on the boardwalk next to Epcot. Truly AMAZING! I could not afford a single night there let alone a week! It was a breathtaking place.

We had 3 adults me, Jason and my mother in law Charlene

and the 3 kids. When I get there my mother in law was not included on the reservation! They originally were going to charge me one of my kids for her for the week (in other words it was so much money it was like a ransom!). They then called GKTW and straightened out the “charges”.

I had NO IDEA what I was going to walk into for our room but knew we were suppose to have a 2 bedroom 4 double bed villa.

Here is what we got

Here I am calling to figure out how the heck we are all suppose to fit in this place!

I thought I was on Candid Camera. I was shocked that while it was gorgeous there was in NO WAY enough room.

Now since they didn’t have my MIL listed our room was only a double bed suite! HELLO 6 people 2 beds!

So-on the phone they tell me they are OVER booked and DO NOT have another room available. Amber is under 3 so qualifies as a “babY’ not an extra person, so we should be able to fit someone on the couch.

Now I am a perfectionist, very outgoing, and speak m,y mind always (not always a good thing). I am also more hight stress, where Jason and his mom are totally relaxed, roll with the punches life is a bed of roses! So my point is “I” am the only one FREAKING out! And feeling like an A$$ since his mom is like “whatever”. I know my kids won’t sleep all in ONE bed, and I sure as heck don’t want any of them in mine! LOL! Jay and I have a King bed at home, so a full wasn’t cutting it with 3 people. Noah is high strung like me, so I knew he wouldnt sleep with anyone!

Anyway, they sent us a “cot”. Oh well. Shouldn’t complain. But I was a little miffed by the situation. Here is our gorgeous view complete with full view of the Fire Works at night.

My two little mice (Amber & Noah)

So pretty much the first day was getting settled, and finding food and our hotel.

MEETING FRIENDS!

So our first day we have a lunch date at the House Of Blues! 11:30am.

I am meeting Staci (misermom), and family as well as Rebecca (rgohall) and Kim from My favorite Things Stamps (Kim remind me of your scs user name please!).

So its rainy and dreary. So we decide to hit the Market Place at Down Town Disney! Im excited to see their stamp/scrapping store. So Jason decides we don’t need a stroller to walk around. I argue to no avail. I usually win but decided FINE, no stroller. Keep in mind Alexa is back to 48lbs (thank god) and can’t walk well long distances.

Now its drizzling, and everything is still CLOSED! Nothing really opens till 11 amish. Its like 9am.

I go HUNT for my long awaited store, and after draggin the 3 kids around am deeply disappointed there was not much there! Now its muggy we are each taking turns carrying the kids around. We end up running late! Figures. I am complaining that we should have got a stoller cause my back is breaking and its a LONG walk. What a crappy morning it was.

We did get these cool views on our journey!

This is Noah next to a Dragon in the water, made completely out of Leggo’s!!! It was SO COOL!!!!

Now here we have me, Alexa and Amber and the closest Alexa was able to get to Cinderella! That was the only sad thing. She REALLY wanted to see Cinderella and was unable to! Now I’m gonna have to rent-a-Cinderella for her next birthday or something. Apparently she is a BIG DEAL at Disney and most people don’t get to visit her unless you drop $175 at the Magic Castle for Dinner! YIKES! This was outside the Disney Store.

Now comes the meeting! I was so excited and nervous all at the same time. You never know how people are going to be “in real life”. You worry if you won’t have anything to talk about and stuff like that. I can generally talk the ear off a rock! LOL! Anyway here we all are!

It was Staci, me, Rebecca, and Kim.

Staci brought gifts for the kids (leave it to her!) goodness! I felt so awful, I had all I could do to pack let alone think of anything like that! She even framed her super cool Groovy Card for Alexa!

We were there 3 hours! 15 people- 6 kids total, and they were ALL amazingly well behaved (thank god cause Jason was on Kid patrol, so I could visit with my friends)

There was a stage where all the kids played. It was really great. The food was really good too.

Everyone was awesome. Staci is SOOOOOO nice as you can all imagine. I was so excited to get to meet her. What a huge heart she has. Her parents were so nice too. We had a great time. Her kids Rachel, and Rebecca, and like their mom they are amazing as well. They are so sweet to Alexa. They all seemed to have so much fun. Alexa is still confused by the computer friend’s thing and I think the meeting made it more confusing-someday she’ll get it!

Rebecca was sweet to get time out of work! Just for our meeting!! Can you believe it? What a long lunch break too! LOL! She is the quieter person of the group, and Im sure walking into all of us was overwhelming for her.

Its was cool to meet Kim from MFT stamps, as I LOVE her stuff! Shes very cool. Shes on her way to the big time. Her buisness is taking off. I really love her style, and she is sweet too! Her daughter Emily was such a good girl through the entire thing too.

Then it was back out to the rain!

I think we went to take a LONG nap after that. Its a big blur right now. It kept down pouring and was just miserable. We ate dinner at the Give Kids the World then off to bed.

MGM our time there

Now its Tuesday, and we have Alexa’s Princess Dinner at Epcot for 5:45. We decide to go to MGM first, while the weather is cloudy, then we will nap and go to the dinner.

Now the cool thing is Alexa doesn’t have to wait in line for anything! So we get right into everything, and get to visit all the character’s as well. She get FRONT row seating, and some of the “attractions” treat her extra special!

First stop was Disney Clubhouse. We saw a show with JoJo’s Circus, Bear in the Big Blue House, Winnie the Pooh, and I think that was it.

This is Noah POUTING. He did alot of this. We had to get a picture cause it was quite amusing (at first).

This is what he’d do. Stick out his lip, and cross his arms. He didn’t want to see the show. He wanted to do his “own” thing.

This is Amber singing and dancing throughout the show. She was AMAZING! Here she is this little thing, only 2 1/2, and she wasn’t afraid of ANYTHING! All the big people in their costumes, all the show’s, she just took it all in and LOVED every minute! The entire trip she was just a joy. She even convinced Alexa and Noah at times to go ahead “its not scary its pretend” she would say. “Go ahead, give them 5 they are nice”. It was SO cute!

Here we all are BEFORE the show.

Here is a photo taken AFTER the show! They let Alexa stay and meet Bear! She was freaking out, and ran away! LOL! I had to grab her and show her he was friendly. It was really cool how well we were treated.

This is Alexa running around to collect autograph’s. She really enjoyed this! We got a photo with each one. Her book was a Princess photo/autograph book. So it will be really cool to put the photos of her next to each signature.

Here we are meeting all kinds of characters! It was cool we got special attention and NO wait. The lines to see these characters everywhere was VERY long.

This made Noah’s day. Getting to meet Buzz Light-year and Woody from Toy Story!

We also did the Honey I Shrunk the Kids park (not good for Alexa, the Muppets 3-D movie-that did not go well with Alexa and Amber I had to leave in the middle, and DONT go to The Little Mermaid show and sit in the front! OMG! Through the show it “rains” and we got SOAKED!!! Amber and Alexa screamed!!! Alexa was terrified or the big Ursula! OMG what a nightmare.

Adult standpoint it was a cool show though.

There are other cool things too-this is Jason, the city behind him is a painting!

We were going to see Beauty and the Beast but the Beast was big and it started to POUR!!! So thats when we left for naptime!

The girls were exhausted! We had to wake them up to go to the Princess Dinner at Epcot.

EPCOT PRINCESS DINNER

OMG! Can I tell you this was a nightmare!!!! We couldn’t get close to the gate and it was POURING BUCKETS!!!!!!!!

Charlene and I grab a kid and ran (in flip flops) through the rain to get out tickets. The carriage rental was quite a run a way. So I got the tickets, and we ran to the carriage rental. Despite leaving a 45 minutes earlier we are running late (need to be 15 min. early for the dinner).

We have rain coast and trash bags on the kids. The dinner is is the WAYYYYYYYYY back of the park. We are running with our carriages through pouring rain. Alexa is in tha carriage traumatized cause all she see is splashing and me plowing through a park of die hard Disney fans to get there.

My confirmation is unreadable, and we are lost in the park. I can’t find Jason or anything. I just keep running. They can’t find us in the confirmation that make a wish gave us and can’t read my confirmation number cause we are all drenched-backpacks included. They didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said Make a Wish! WHAT???? Epcot is clueless! Let me just tell you.

FINALLY they let us in!

It is a very expensive dinner, and food is NOT kid friendly! Go FIGURE!

NO Cinderella!!! OMG! WHAT!!!!!

Alexa was excited to meet all the princesses, but said”Mommy where is Cinderella?” I told her she couldn’t be here. She said “Oh she has to go on the horses to a dance?” I was like Oh God thank you! “Yes, honey she has to go meet the prince for dinner instead”.

So after all that it was definitely worth it as Alexa LOVED the Princess meeting. Funny she would smile most AFTER they left! LOL!

Here are some photos

Now let me tell you, when you have stuffed yourself on vacation, and look like a drowned RAT you really don’t want to be having dinner with these girls! LOL! The things we do for our kids 😀

After that it was off to see the Nemo ride (yes still pouring).

See our happy family

It was at this point it became “Make-A-Nightmare”. The funnniest part was I wasn’t as freaked as Jason or my MIL! LOL! I guess I was just like this is what it is, our life. I felt like Alexa’s dream was ruined but she didn’t complain at all! But thats her. I thought if SHE had a good time then thats all that mattered. Rain or not! I will say by this time Jason and I were ready to file for DIVORCE! LOL! Vacation with three kids is tough. We had a lot of carrying Alexa and misery from Noah. It was definitely stressful with all the rain, and little sleep we were getting. We never fight so being on edge the entire time was new to us. We didn’t get a single date on our trip either! That was definitely disappointing.

Anyway here is Nemo pictures.

Thia is Caption Hooks Ship made of FLOWERS! Really cool Alexa was totally into TINKERBELL the most on this trip, and anything Peter Pan! We just got the movie several week ago, and its played NON STOP! Maybe thats why. Even her raincoat is Tinkerbell. I was so surprised by this.

These are the jelly fish from the Nemo ride. Alexa was in awe fo them! She loved the Nemo ride, Crush the interactive turtle was a MUST see! And of course the aquarium was cool. There is Tinkerbelle’s garden which was also amazing. No photos. Too much rain. We didn’t get to see the Fantasmic show or anything-bummer.

NEXT UP some sun!!!! And the Animal Kingdom!

First you see the Tree of Life! Its HUGE!!! On the tree are carvings of all kinds of Jungle animals-just amazing. I know I keep using that word but it really is!

Inside the tree you can see the 3D movie A Bugs Life. Given our history of terrfied children during 3D movies we were smart enough to skip this one!

SAFARI TIME!

The Safari was SO COOL!!! We saw elephants, and crocodiles, hippos, giraffes, Mommy and baby rhino’s. Really cool zebra’s. leopards, lions, pretty much everything you’d hope to see on a

Safari. It was bumpy but the kids LOVED it!

Now off to the ROLLER COASTER-Mount everest!

OK here is Jason and Noah AFTER going down this HUGE roller

coaster! Jay and I had a HUGE fight about ttraumatizing Noah. I just finally said fine if he meets the height requirement then he can go. Well wouldn’t you know it the freakin kid is the size of an almost 7 year old and he made it! I admitted I was WRONG when Noah said he LOVED it! My heart was in my throat as I watched them coming down the hill

I’m sure ALL you mom’s are with me. I even pulled the I carried him for 10 months, and labored 12 hours card. He was my easiest labor so that didn’t help!! It doesn’t look bad in the photo but TRUST-me its a huge coaster!

We then took in the Lion King show and some more character signing! Then it was off to nap land so we could go to Magic Kingdom at night. I wanted the kids to see the Parade of lights.

MAGIC KINGDOM NIGHT TIME OF FUN! NOT!!!!

OK so its was a sunny day. We take the kids to the Magic Kingdom at night to see the light parade.

Alexa’s mouth just hung open when she saw the Castle. She kept saying “oh! Its Magic! Its Magic!

Here are me and my girls!

Here is the inside of the Castle. Its all little tiles that make up a mural. Just gorgeous! This one was Alexa’s favorite!

The kids got to do some of the rides. Alexa LOVED the carousel, tea cups and Peter Pan the most. She also really liked Aladdin’s carpet ride.

Noah LOVED the Buzz Lightyear ride.

I think Amber’s favorite was (besides everything) the driving the Race Car! She was all over the place but so loved being a big girl.

So its about 10 minutes before the 11pm Parade of Lights. We have a front row spot and are ready to go! You see some lightning but its hot, so you figure no big deal right.

WRONG! Its started POURING!!! Like you never seen anything like this. People-thousands, go running out of the park. This mean the buses, and TRAM are booked solid. Massive lines of people with no shelter, crowding to get on them. We wait out the rain for a hour to no avail. We are stuck there with 3 kids, 2 in the wheelchair and Noah fell asleep on Jason. I was just standing there thinking it will be HOURS till be get out of here. There are only 2 ways out of the magic kingdom, and they were booked solid with people. No way to get on first even though Alexa was deemed handicap for the trip. Finally a woman helps us and gives us a “secret route”. We are still soaked, disappointed and exhausted. Im also freaking cause Alexa CANNOT get sick! Especially now. We get to the hotel at 1:30 soaked and exhausted. The kids had rain jackets but it didn’t matter too much. What an awful end to the day.

NEXT MORNING

SUNNY!!! YEAH!

We go back to magic kingdom to see the parade

and do more rides. We take in a 3-D movie and a nice woman got a a reservation at a Charachter dinner that is usually booked solid! She felt bad for us when we were telling her about our trip, and she wanted the kids to be wide eyed for the 9 o’clock light show. Its was a wonderful dinner!!! And the lighted parade was AMAZING!!!!!

More photos from the day that I love

The day ended up to be PERFECT!!!!! Both parades were fabulous, the character dinner was also a great way to end the day, and the light parade was a hit with the kids. Especially Alexa! FINALLY!

Now the last day we went to SEA WORLD!

Isn’t Shamu beautiful!

It was a great show! We had a nice time and the weather was good. Spent the whole day there.

The next day we had to go home. The morning was spent packing, then back to Give Kids the World. We had one last ice cream before it was time to say goodbye. This is how it feels at the end of a week long vacation with rain and 3 kids! I was joking and telling Jason, OH its finally over. All the luggin and running around. I just want to choke myself. So he thought it was funny. We agreed this is how it feels to take 3 kids anywhere! LOL!

As we got ready to go- Here is Alexa on the couch REFUSING to leave! Broke my heart!

Now here she is at home with her super cool light up Princess hat

For the GRAND Finale this was Alexa’s favorite part-seeing Cinderella in the parade

Thanks for sharing our crazy journey! Im so THANKFUL for the Make-A-Wish foundation. They made this time for Alexa just amazing. I know none of us will ever forget it. They gave her something we would not be able to otherwise-a dream come true! She was SO HAPPY, rain or shine, the entire time.

Feels good to be home now. Back to doctors appointments and reality!