Make a Wish Trip – Day 1

Today was a LOONG day! We started out leaving a half hour later than we wanted to to head for the airport. I managed to make up most of the time during the drive though – don’t ask. 🙂 So after chasing 7 kids around all morning, then driving to the airport for an hour, we got on a plane for four hours. What a lovely time. About 2 minutes after we were airborne, the excitement of being on a plane wore off for the kids and the reality of being strapped into an uncomfortable chair for 4 hours really settled in on them. To their credit, they did a pretty good job of keeping quiet for most of the time.

I need to diverge for a second. 6 days ago Indigo (our 4 year old daughter) fell on the concrete and landed on the underside of her chin resulting in it being split very wide open. We took her in and she had to get 6 stitches that had to stay in 5 days – so they came out yesterday night.

Well, no sooner had we landed then a stir crazy Indigo started messing around in the aisles while we were waiting to de-plane. Somehow she managed to end up on the floor and getting her chin stepped on by Gibson. There are about 300 people standing in the aisle and suddenly she is bleeding everywhere! I had to “excuse me” towards the back of the plane to get paper towells and take care of her. Turns out her chin now looks pretty much like it did a week ago. So now I’ve got blood all down me, she is covered in it and there’s some on the seat. Our clothes looked like a mass murder had taken place. Fortunately a good woman handed me a bandage (mine were all checked underneath) that I promptly slapped on her chin.

After we finally exited the plane (in what felt like the slowest de-plane in history) we met up with a rep from Give Kids the World who was holding a big sign for Serenity. We rented a 12 passenger van and made our way to the GKTW Village. This place is magical! The whole place is a playground for kids! We are staying in what looks like a candy house (pictures coming tomorrow) and is right across the street from a lifesize Candyland game! That place looks just like the board game!

We got settled into our cottage and then went to dinner followed by all you can eat ice cream for desert! The kids went and participated in “Village Idol” – a contest for the kids to perform for everyone. In an interesting turn, the judges just could not decide on a winner and so all the participants won!

We headed back to the cottage and got settled in for the night – then everyone decided to order late night pizza. Did I mention that all this food and the lodging – in fact EVERY SINGLE THING is free?!?

So now everyone is crashed and for some reason I’m up blogging. Wow. Time for me to go to bed, it’s 1:25 here! We’ve been taking lots of video and pictures, I’ll get some put up tomorrow.