Make a Wish-Day 2

We got picked up in our limo bright and early Monday morning and took a 3 hour flight to Orlando! The kids did really well on the plane in spite of the fact that we really didn't pack them much to do! Oops. The airline let us board first and the pilot announced that he was dedicating the flight to us and everyone clapped! :)


One of the first things we saw when we arrived in Florida was this lizard. I love lizards and tried all week to catch one but they are super fast! Kaydence was scared of them so she wasn't nearly as thrilled!

After we picked up our van we headed right to Give Kids the World where we checked in and were told to head off to eat lunch. We went to Katie's Kitchen which is a restaurant at the village that serves both lunch and dinner everyday. The kids couldn't believe everything was free! :) Shortly after lunch we got checked in and then it was off to explore the village!



We had our own private villa and they'd stocked the refrigerator with pop, chocolate cake, and left presents for the kids on the kitchen table! We all changed into shorts right away and decided to see what all the village had to offer.



The girls(and Jake) made their way to the Ice Cream Palace right away which serves ice cream, sundaes, banana splits, and shakes everyday from 7am-9pm. That would be the first of MANY daily visits to get ice cream.

I really don't even know how to describe how awesome Give Kids the World is. It's such a magical place and they really think of everything possible to make your stay wonderful and help you forget real life. The doctors, therapies, appt's, prognosis, everything. I think I spent less than 5 minutes all week thinking about anything other than what we were doing then and there. And that's how they intend it!

After exploring the village I headed to the orientation center where they give you all your tickets and tell you about the village. Jake took the kids to the theater where they had an activity going on. I don't know what it was but I know it involved whipped cream pies flying!

We put the kids to bed early since we'd had such a long day and then we ordered pizza! The village offers free pizza after 7:30pm so we took advantage of that often! Overall the day was tiring but good. The warm weather and sunshine along with the flowers and green grass were enough in and of themselves to see!

Stay tuned for day 3! :)

Make a Wish-Day 1

Today isn't technically day 1 since we're not flying out until tomorrow but Make a Wish did give us a hotel stay before we left so I'm considering this day one! I want to make sure to journal each day so this seems like a good way to remember everything we did!

We got up bright and early for the 4 hour drive to Minneapolis. The hotel water park was only open from 10-1pm so we wanted to get in right away. We arrived just in time for it to open and the kids had a blast.


We spent about 2 hours in the water park and then drove over to Mall of America(which is directly across from our hotel) and had lunch at Bubba Gump's shrimp co. We stopped at the Disney store so Kaydence could pick out a princess dress to wear to Magic Kingdom. We'd found one for Kylie at a thrift store a few days earlier. Emeric didn't seem to mind that he didn't get a prince outfit. ;)


After a couple hours at Mall of America we headed back to our hotel. The kids were bummed because the arcade was closed but they were all so tired that hanging out in the room seemed fine with us!

Right now we're waiting for our pizza we ordered and then plan on getting the kids in bed early! Our limo is set to arrive at 6am!

Less than 24 hours until WARM WEATHER AND SUN!!

Worn out!

I think school is wearing this boy out!

I just realized...

Once again it's been a long time since I've updated here. You've got to be pretty funny, witty, or having an interesting story to tell to keep an interesting blog. Or at least one that people will read! I pretty much just use this place because I like to write. That's probably boring to most.

We've gotten back into the routine of the school year. With both the girls in school full time and Emeric in preschool part time I've got quite a bit of time to myself. I've been mostly using the time to study for the two classes I'm taking but I'm also just enjoying sitting at the coffee shop reading or refreshing my facebook page to see if anyone wrote anything interesting.

One thing I've definitely realized about myself since having 3 kids in school is that I am HIGHLY disorganized. I used to think I was just moderately disorganized but... it's bad. So, when you're a really disorganized person how do you even know where to start? I could write a list but I'd probably lose it. I could rent a library book on organization but I'd misplace it and forget to bring it back and rack up even more late charges at the library. Anyway, I decided that I should probably figure out this organization thing being that I'm almost 30.

Am I really almost 30?

I'm gonna need some therapy if I start coming to all these realizations about myself too quickly!

It's not so bad.

When Emeric was seeing a specialist in Cleveland and they stopped accepting his insurance I was bummed. Until I realized the next best doctor was in Texas. I'll take this scene over downtown Cleveland any day! So whenever I have the urge to complain that we have to fly half way around the country for care I remind myself that it's not so bad! :)

Summer

I can't believe summer is already half way over! I'm trying not to rush it more by saying things like the girls go back to school in 7 weeks! Wow! We're already planning on being very busy the rest of the summer. We've got a family reunion coming up, a trip to Houston ], our Epilepsy Stroll and a visit from my dad to name a few!

I start school August 31st so I'm sure that will keep me pretty busy! Emeric will be in school M-TH mornings and his nurse will still have him some of the time so that should give me enough time to do homework!

I'm excited to get back into some of the Bible studies I am a part of during the school year too. I've met a lot of great friends and had some great discussions with the people involved. They are all so great and still contact me in the summer checking in on Emeric! :)

Well, back to weeding the garden. It's pretty sad when my arm muscles are sore from pulling weeds!

Home.

I have been such a bad blogger these last few months... Not even really sure why...

I got home yesterday from a week counseling at Bible Camp. The Mennonite North Central Conference puts on a camp each summer and I've counseled in Senior camp the last two years. This year we had 50ish campers from ages 13-18. It was a blast and I posted a ton of pictures on facebook so I'm not going to re-post them all here! :)

The theme this week was, "The Bible: Use it? or Lose it?" which was my corny idea. lol Basically we discussed if the Bible was still relevant, why, and how. Of course we decided it was and we explored different ways in which it was. A few people shared stories about how the Bible had been useful to them in a hard situation. I shared a bit of Emeric's story as well.

The days are pretty long at camp... we're up at 7:00am and head to breakfast. After breakfast we had game time, morning session, worship time, small groups and lunch. After lunch is fine arts, afternoon rec, water fun and then dinner. After dinner is evening rec, night session, worship, devotions, and finally... sleep. Although sleep is hard to come by at camp! With musty, damp cabins that keep your blankets wet, giggly campers, a 2" mattress, and other factors it's not hard to see why!

I'm really glad I decided to go back. I was worried about missing my kids and prayed a lot about that and can honestly say I didn't. Of course if I thought about it long I would but there just wasn't enough time for that. We kept too busy! I really made an effort to stay present and keep my mind on camp instead of other stuff because it's pretty hard to be effective otherwise. It was also nice to be technology free for a week! Really makes you realize how much our society lacks in true relationships and conversation when you don't use a cell phone or computer all week!

I'm now home and trying to rest up before we start packing AGAIN to go camping this coming weekend!! :)