Thursday, October 13, 2011

Make-A-Wish Trip, Day 1: Arrival

On Sunday, October 9th, 2011, we started our journey south to Orlando. Julia's wish was to go to Disney World, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation was providing that for her and the rest of her lucky family members.

Amanda and I had an inkling what our airport transportation would be, but the kids were surprised to see the limo pull into the driveway at 6:15am. It was dark still, so a decent picture had to wait until after we arrived at the airport.


Julia has a few flights under her belt, but this one was the first time for Finn. Leading up to the trip, flying was definitely the thing most often mentioned by him.


Finn did quite well but ended up getting sick at the very end of the flight during a strong bout of turbulence. Julia had her nose in a book for the landing and wasn't bothered at all.

After getting our rental car, we headed to Give Kids the World. As we were getting close, Finn got sick again. We realized later that he had a fever too, so we're not sure how much of him getting sick was the bumping of the plane and the car and how much was that he was actually just sick.

We stayed at the Give Kids the World village. It's a resort that offers itself to kids with severe medical conditions. A family would be able to stay at the property for a week without leaving and have all their meals and activities provided for. We utilized some of each but also took advantage of the close proximity to the theme parks.

Each family gets a villa to stay in while there. It didn't take long for it to start feeling pretty homey. Julia called it our hometel - a cross between a home and a hotel.


After getting settled in we explored our surroundings.




We went to bed knowing we had a busy week ahead of us!