Beanie's Blog: That was a great game.

I'm so sorry this is so late. We got home and Ainsley was down with a fever for a few days, we had Selene's 2 year checkup/rebirthday today (that will be another post but all is going really well), and I've been trying to get the girls back to sleeping after the craziness of everything.

Our trip was absolutely magical! That's totally cliche, but it was. We had a few blips on our travel day. We've never flown Southwest before and no one mentioned anything about Make a Wish as we checked in and dealt with gate checking our stroller. Totally fine. Except when we went to board with the family group a family pushed in front of us and then let every single person get on before moving forward. So we were in the back row of the plane. Not a big deal but it was frustrating. Then our attendant said "Didn't you know you get pre-board with Make a Wish?" No! Needless to say the flight home was flawless.

We were met by a lovely greeter from Give Kids the World who walked us over to the rental car pick up. She was wonderful but talked sooooooo much and we just wanted to get on the road. THEN Avis just dropped the ball. Completely. And I just wrote the crazy story and erased it. It's in the past and it was forgotten as soon as we stepped foot into the House of Hearts.

Give Kids the World is as amazing as everyone said. It's built specifically with the kids in mind. The dining room has child size tables which the girls loved. There was a carousel, ice cream parlor, castle of miracles, playroom, train, mini golf, arcade, movie theater, Ainsley's favorite-the candyland playground and then parties each night. We tried to do as much as we could and still left so much left undiscovered.

The Castle of Miracles might have been the most incredible part of the resort (followed closely by the amazing volunteers). This is a building/castle where little glass stars line the ceiling. They spread into every room of the castle until they had to build a new tower because of all the shining stars. Selene decorated her star and it was put up by Stella the Star fairy into the Joy constellation. Whenever we go back to visit we will get to see her star up on the ceiling. My Dad happened to have a business meeting pop up in Orlando and was able to join us Sunday night and Monday in the parks. And my bestie drove down from Jacksonville for a day at Universal. Both of them were taken aback at the magnitude of the stars. Maybe it's because I've spent hundreds of hours at CHOP, maybe because I'm in Facebook groups where we chat about tubies and doctor appointments and terrifying things like Chemo like we're discussing which diaper cream to buy. But I joined their awe as we looked at every star. I know some of those stars still shine bright on this earth and that some have moved to the skies above. It's heart breaking and amazing all at the same time. Regardless, you know that each and every one represents a brave little warrior and their family who bravely battled through their journey.

We arrived on Sunday and flew home on Saturday so we had 5 park days. There was just so much to do and while we planned tons- park hopping, dinners, fireworks, we canceled a lot of it because the girls both got over done in the parks and because they wanted to be back at the resort for parties and fun.

Oh! I'll take a moment to mention our fun ride to the airport in a limo! 5 minutes before it arrived Ainsley got worried that we wouldn't all fit in the "taxi." Everyone was super excited for the fancy ride.

We started Monday at Hollywood Studios so that Ainsley could train to be a Jedi. She loved it! We watched some fun shows, rode the best ride in Disneyworld-Toy Story Mania (somehow only once with the genie pass! what a waste!) and after we did everything we wanted (though we skipped lots of good stuff) we hopped over to Magic Kingdom. We had planned to stay for 8pm fireworks but that didn't happen.

What did happen is that we found out Selene is a roller coaster junkie. Like, loooooves them. She even looked at the crazy upside down, you have to be 6ft tall to ride it, coaster at Universal and was like "Can we go on that?!" Um, no. Never.