Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Wish Trip - Day Two

Our second day, Tuesday, was no less special than the first.

We began the day with breakfast at Give Kids the World (gktw) at the Gingerbread House. Wonderful food and service again. Afterwards, a local horse program called Freedom Ride brought two horses to gktw for the kids to ride. Liam was too young, but Braeden and Olivia had a BLAST! The two pictures here of their ride were taken by a photographer at gktw. They had photograpers throughout the week at the special activities taking loads of pictures. At the end of your stay, each family receives a CD full of these pictures, as well as general pictures of the entire village. Amazing!!! Each of the three kids also received a cowboy hat after riding, can you say Braeden was excited!???



After horseback riding we went back to our villa and got dressed for swimming. We took the kids to the larger of the two pools at gktw. SO much fun!!! My eye was caught as we went in as there were two vending machines there. It surprised me since EVERYTHING at gktw is absolutely FREE. BUT, then I completely cracked up! The machine FULL of candy bars, chips, etc has a price tag of 25 CENTS EACH!!! I couldn't believe it!!! They so want this trip to be special and at no cost to the families who stay with them. They don't even have a "store" on property at all, though you can purchase small gifts and tshirts online.


Once we finished swimming and changed back to our clothes, grandma and I took the 3 kiddos to Disney's Hollywood Studios (formally MGM), and Animal Kingdom for the day.

We had made a reservation for lunch at Hollywood and Vine, a buffet we literally stumbled upon on our last trip last summer. We had hoped on that trip to eat lunch at Primetime Cafe while at MGM. I love that place, it's so Brady Bunch it's hilarious. The waitresses call you by name and they have black and white tvs and complete 50s/60s decor. BUT, it was booked last summer, so they suggested the buffet and that's where we ate. WE LOVED IT!!! It was amazing. A bit pricey, and if we hadn't been on the dining plan we probably wouldn't have done it, but it was so good!!! I found out that they have a character breakfast and lunch there, so we planned to lunch there on this day.

One of the unbelievable parts of Make a Wish and gktw trips to Orlando is the theme parks. We could NEVER have done even part of what's available to do. You are given one day at Seaworld, two at Universal, and three at Disney. Then, there are numerous others which you can get free tickets to as well, and many experiences which are extremely cheap. In addition, the wish child receives a large gktw button to wear and the rest of us had been given Make a Wish buttons. We wore these each day, and as someone had said to me once, they can sometimes "make magic happen." And they did. In addition, at each of the parks, we were able to ride rides without waiting in line. Disney had you go through the fast pass line, so at times we waited a short time, but nothing like the others who were there. It sure spoiled us!!!

After getting to MGM, we went first to Ariel's "show" as that is Olivia's very favorite and the one thing she really wanted to do. We got through quite a few things before lunch at 10:30, and even saw a short High School Musical "show" in front of the big sorcerer's hat. Olivia was in heaven!!!

Lunch was great, and we saw the Little Einsteins and JoJo's Circus which were a big hit! Liam wanted nothing to do with any of them - until Goliath came!!! He loved Goliath! Too funny!


After lunch we headed to Animal Kingdom. That park is good, but we really didn't want to walk through all the things, especially as we've been there a number of times. What we wanted to do there was see the Lion King show which is our favorite in the parks, and Olivia and I wanted to ride Expedition Everest since she was now big enough! Oh my goodness! I LOVED that ride! And so did she, we went twice, no waiting remember! :) Then went to Lion King, great as always, and then headed back to MGM. At MGM we went to/on a few more things. I "made" Olivia go on Tower of Terror with me since she was big enough, but she hated it! :) Oh well, now she knows.! She loved the drops, but hated the rest of the ride, too scary! :) While we were on the ride, grandma took the boys to the ice cream counter across the way. The woman who waited on her saw her Make a Wish button and said there was NO CHARGE! Unreal!

We then wanted to go to Fantasmic which we LOVE LOVE LOVE! You need to really go at least an hour early to get decent seats, and we wanted to be near the top, so we were there early. We waited and the kids did so great. A little before the show a dark cloud floated past, but I didn't see any lightening and there was no rain. The show started, played about 3 min of lights and music, then the "theater" lights came on and they thanked us for coming and said they hoped we could all come back to see it in it's entirety sometime!!!! What!? We were so upset. That is a long wait with kids for nothing. Oh well, at least we've seen it before, I really felt for those who had never seen it.

We then left for the villa and bed. When we got there, grandpa showed us something on our table. Three stuffed animals, one for each child, had been dropped off during the day along with our daily "Village Voice" which lists the schedule and menus for the next day. Wow! The kids were excited, but so tired they barely noticed. :) Off to bed for all...

1 comments:

Brandi said...

No way! How can it keep getting better? That's unreal! I can't even remember all of the things I was going to comment on now. . .so much! I just can't believe it. What a WONDERFUL trip to celelbrate a pretty amazing girl and her amazing family too! I can't wait to hear more and see more pictures!

Brandi
PS I finally did my post too. . I kind of went off on a tangent though! shocker. I just love your family!

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About Me

I am a single mom to four amazing kids; each of whom just happen to have been adopted. The first three were adopted through foster care, and we just completed an international adoption from Haiti. Our family has grown through adoption and I am all the more blessed to know each of my children. I worship a mighty God, teach Special Ed, love bargains, and am inspired by Pinterest... come along with us for the ride!


Olivia - 14

Olivia - 14

Braeden - 11

Braeden - 11

Liam - 9

Liam - 9

Macy - 5

Macy - 5

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Orphan Crisis

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• 50 million orphans in Africa 
• Every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS
• 16,000,000 have been orphaned by AIDS
• Every week, AIDS claims as many lives as American fatalities in the Vietnam War
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Hence the title of my blog

Little Did I Know

Little did I know that the road would be so rocky
Little did I know that the trip would take so long
Little did I know that my heart could hurt so much
Little did I know that God is never wrong

Little did I know that love could be so powerful
Little did I know that a dream so far could go
Little did I know that God would place the right ones
Little did I know that my heart, so large, could grow

Little did I know that a dream has it’s own timing
Little did I know that this day would finally come
Little did I know that four souls would be sent to guide me
Little did I know that they would choose to call me mom

But God knew all along and He had a plan to follow
God knew all along that my dream would soon come true
God knew all along that we five should be together
God knew all along that I’d share it all with you