Rainbow Connection Wish Trip - Florida/Disney

Alright...........here are a few of the photos from Daniel's wish trip. (Does it feel like when people bring out photos of boring trips and expect you to be excited about it?!?) :)

Daniel's Limo arrives to take us to the airport. He thought he was way cool!

Daniel on his first airplane ride. I can't post the picture of his teenage sister....as she looked as pale as a ghost and close to vomiting and hyperventilating. It was also her first flight (and probably her last trip on a plane!). Daniel on the other hand thought it was funny and watched out the window the whole time. Tori came close to grabbing for the puke bag a couple of times. The seat belt fastened light stayed on the whole time....TONS OF TURBULENCE!!

Once we got to Florida (with a few issues on the way there: airport security lost Tori's ticket for 5 minutes, my temporary crown on my tooth fell out and broke!) there was this wonderful lady holding up her little sign that had "Give Kids the World Village Welcomes Daniel Spranger" (GKTW). She took us to get our rental car and got our bags, gave us directions on how to get to the village.......and we were off.

They checked us in and gave Daniel AND Victoria presents! They knew our name when we walked in, and it was so very very cool

Here is a photo of The Castle of Dreams that is at GKTW. I will just say we could have stayed here for 7 days straight and not gone to any amusement parks. They treated us like royalty. Everyone said hello and talked with Daniel and Tori. There were different activities planned each day, they had a train to ride and two heated pools..........and and we must not forget....food to eat at all times and the wonderful ice cream parlor that was open everyday from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. And remember everything at GKTW is FREE to its residents!! Can anyone guess how many banana splits/ice cream cones/sundaes were eating in all our time there? Would you care to guess the weight gain of the family members!?!

In the Castle of on the ceiling is a pretty amazing thing. It is very heart wrenching actually. There are over 60,000 stars with the names of Wish children who have come to stay with them. Each child writes their name on the sparkling gold star and it is given to the star fairy and each night the star fairy takes the stars and puts them on the ceiling where they will stay forever. It brings tears to my eyes thinking of all those special children who have been there because they got an unfair deal. They were brought into this world, and they suffer and they have a life threatening/terminal illness. I wonder how many of those children are still here blessing the lives of the people around them, and how many have passed away. The next day, you receive at your villa a little card from the Star Fairy and she tells you where your star is located and you can go find it.Sea World. Daniel loves to watch the shows.......preferably in air conditioning!! Daniel does not sweat. His medication makes it very difficult for him to tolerate heat at all. And were were lucky to get absolutely beautiful weather everyday in the mid 90's, with no rain except the last day (gave us a day to try to recoup!) SO we adjust schedules a little bit and stayed in the GKTW village (there was plenty to do) and went to the parks later in the days when it wasn't as warm or as crowded.One of the Parks at Disney- Animal Kingdom. Very nice, I myself loved the safari ride!

Here is Daniel enjoying a turkey leg, that he had to hold! On our trip Daniel's terrible twos (almost 3's) started to kick in and he wanted to do everything himself with out help! We couldn't feed him unless he was holding the spoon, and if you touched his arm to help guild him.....he pushed back. If he held his spoon and I tried to feed him with another spoon, lips clamped shut! the first 24 hours there he wouldn't' drink his bottle either....which is where he gets all his yummy goodness from. Nope.......only thing I could get him to swallow for liquids was BLUE Gatorade and it had to be in a squeeze bottle or forget it~ Isn't he the cutest?

Lonnie did a "stand-in" for Daniel because he was sleeping. Handy Manny is one of Daniel's favorite characters!Here is the fam....and Daniel not being too happy that Piglet is touching him. They are OK to see from afar...but he does NOT like them up close. If Daniel could have he would have said "He's touchin' me, he's touchin' me..AAAAAAH!"

Here we watched a show called "Animal Actors" which was basically a whole bunch of animals that have been in movies and they explained how they get the animals to do all the tricks. After the show was over we were told to wait to move out of our special seating. That was so that when everyone was out...Daniel got to see some animals up close and meet the dog from the movie "Men in Black"

Here is Daniel when he is happy that we are going to see Mickey Mouse, Little Einsteins, Winnie the Pooh & Friends and some of his other characters. This is Daniel giving me the evil eye and not being happy cause the show was "All Done" These are Tori and Daniel on the ferry boat coming back from one of the parks. There are tons of pictures so I obviously can't post them all. I also asked Tori for her camera because she had been taking pictures the whole time we were there, but when I looked at the photos all I saw were pictures of random guys. She obviously is a teenager!! She was taking photos of all the "HOT" guys she saw so she could show all of her friends when she got home. See what I have to deal with!