A Magical Day

We had a wonderful trip to Disney World. Absolutely fabulous. But it started and ended pretty bumpy.
The night before we were due to leave, I suggested to Mike that we get our boarding passes for our flight. Mike sat as his computer for a while and when I looked over, he was rubbing his eyes, a bit despondently. I asked if something was wrong. "Yes. This shows that our flight was booked, but never purchased." A bit of scrambling and checking credit card statements and low and behold, yes, Mike had not actually purchased tickets for the flight the next day. Luckily there were still tickets available for flights from Chicago to Orlando on 1/1/2012. The ones at reasonable times were $200 more than the flight at 6:35a. So we decided sleep was less important than $1000 and changed our plans to get up at 2am and start our vacation.
All is well that ends well. We made the flight, got to Orlando and enjoyed some warm weather, the pool and a family nap.
The next 3 1/2 days we spent at Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. Gram and Pop joined us and we had adjoining rooms at the Comtemporary Resort with views of Magic Kingdom. Each night the girls bundled up in their coats and blankets and watched the fireworks. We got to watch Cinderella's castle change colors. Lily's favorite color was the pinkish-purplish.
On Tuesday we had breakfast at Cinderella's castle. We got pictures with and autographs from Snow White, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Cinderella. Kelsey gave Cinderella a red, heart-shaped marble she found in her pocket. Lily told Belle that she is her favorite princess because she reads lots and lots of books.
All three girls enjoyed the Carousel. Lily and Addison both liked the tea cups, but Kelsey thought they were too scary. Winnie the Pooh was found to be too dark and scary. Mike's favorite is probably It's a Small World which we all agreed was MUCH better than we remembered. Addison and Lily rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Although she looked rather petrified the whole ride and was relieved when the ride was over, Addison declared that it was almost "too much fun for me" and asked to ride it again. Lily went on Splash Mountain with me. Although she laughed quite a bit when my glasses were covered with water droplets, Lily stated she would never, ever ride that again after surviving the 50 foot drop.
A fun game we played was guess the color of the monorail. Whenever we were waiting for a monorail, we'd each pick a color (orange, pink, red, blue...). Whoever guess right got a "WooHoo!" from the rest of us.
My favorite was the Animal Kingdom safari. Addison's too. While at Animal Kingdom, we did a character meal at Tusker House Restaurant. We were able to meet Goofy, Mickey, Donald and Daisy Duck. The meal was buffet style and I think probably all of our favorite meals for the time at Disney. Gram stood in line so the girls could meet Pluto. Pluto was very excited about Addison's light up shoes much to Addison's delight.
On Thursday we started the day with standing in a short line to meet Tinker Bell. Kelsey was able to let her know that she is her favorite fairy. We were happy to have Kelsey meet Tinker Bell as this was the one thing she hoped she'd get to do at Disney World.
After 4 hours at Magic Kingdom, we started our journey home. Addison had not been feeling well all day and didn't eat lunch. As we were waiting in a LONG line at security at the Orlando airport, Addison vomited. Fortunately a family next to us was prepared for a vomiting child and had a bag to offer us. So we didn't have too much of a mess. And we are also thankful for airsick bags on the airplane and that we could take to use for the drive from Chicago back home. After surviving the flight, waiting a LONG time for our bags to arrive, and negotiating all of our bags, stroller and children on the to shuttle bus, we made it to our car, only to discover that the battery was dead. Ugh. Luckily a security car was nearby and the driver called for help. Surprisingly this resulted in only about a 15 minute delay.
From there we had smooth sailing and arrived home late at night, but all three girls slept on the drive home and went immediately to sleep once we got them in their beds.
So a rough start and end, but an awesome trip. The girls are ready to schedule the next one already.
One sweet story from our trip home. Lily started crying as we were leaving our parking spot at the Midway airport. I asked her what was wrong. She explained that she was sad because the pixie dust that was sprinkled in her hair at Castle Couture didn't work because her wish didn't come true. I asked what she wished for. At first she started to say she wished something about Mommy and Daddy, then she changed her mind and said it was that she wished that Jack (our 9 year old cocker spaniel) wouldn't be blind anymore. What can you say to that?