Make-a-Wish: Sea World and Easter

On Easter we got up and they had some Easter bunny helpers delivering Easter baskets to all the kids. It was so cute! We celebrated Easter the Sunday before we came to Florida so the kids thought it was pretty fantastic to get another basket!

The village had an Easter egg hunt and our little hunters were excited and had fun!

Then we headed to Sea World. Originally we planned not to go to Sea World, but I am so glad we changed our minds because it ended up being our favorite day!!! 

It wasn't as busy as the other parks and therefore it was much more relaxing! We had so much fun and all the kids loved it!!!

Shamu!!!!

Daphne LOVED the fish!!!

I was super surprised with how many rides they had! They had some really awesome big rides and a really fun area for little kids! Laynie and Drake got to experience their very first roller coaster and loved it!!! Trevor and I went on an awesome roller coaster called the Manta and you are laying on your stomach the whole time. It was my favorite ride of the trip!!!

I love our little photo bomber in the back. He thinks it is hilarious to photo bomb! 

Sharks are so creepy, but cool. All the animals are just amazing! We missed a lot of fun stuff that we wanted to see but when all the kids are pooped it's just time to go, so I look forward to going back again! I have been to Sea World in San Diego many times and I don't remember it being this cool at all but maybe I'm wrong! We loved Sea World!!!!

The kids made their own little animals (like build-a-bear) and Drake was very proud of his dolphin football player that he named Steve Petersen!!!

Laynie made a bear and I thought she would love it, but she hasn't been super interested. After she made it and dressed it up she kept trying to put it back and buy a mermaid costume! Haha but it was too late that darn $50 stuffed animal was already made! She would sign "which one" and then run over to the mermaid costume! lol!!!

Drake and his buddy Steve later that night!!!

Make-a-Wish: Hollywood Studios

Our first park day was at Holloywood Studios. I didn't know much about this park before we went. There were a lot of shows here! 

Meeting our first character... Green Army Guy!!!

And close by were Woody and Buzz! We were excited about seeing them. Toy Story was definitely a favorite in our house!!!! We also LOVED the Toy Story ride!!!

Mike and Sully!!!

Laynie was excited about Minnie! She was very sweet and took a lot of time with Laynie!!!

All the characters were so wonderful with Laynie! They seek her out and give her so much attention! It's really cute! The characters were a big hit for Laynie!!!

We really loved the Frozen singalong and the Toy Story ride at Hollywood Studios! Daphne didn't like any of the characters! She did like the Disney Jr. Show though! Daphne was difficult at the parks because she didn't want to ride in her stroller and it was so crowded so it was hard to let her walk. Good thing her daddy is strong because he carried her a lot! There weren't as many rides at Hollywood Studios but we still enjoyed ourselves! 

Make-a-Wish: Give Kids the World

This post is going to be all about our stay at Give Kids the World. Give Kids the World was the very BEST part of our trip in my opinion! This is the most magical, wonderful, and happiest place on earth! We were greeted at the airport with a special sign and this kind volunteer helped carry our luggage and got us to our rental car! My mom also came with us to help and join in on the fun! She was a tremendous help, thanks mom!

The villas that you stay at are adorable! Each family gets their own 2 bedroom 2 bath, full kitchen, and laundry town home! The most amazing part of the village is the volunteers. I fought many tears watching them share their love and kindness throughout the week. The village is run mostly on volunteers. Many of them live far away and take their only vacation they have for the year to come volunteer and others live near by and put in countless hours of service! It is so heartwarming and incredible. It is a true dream of Trevor and I's to be able to go back and volunteer someday! 

The next best thing about the village was the ice cream shop! Some days we went there 3 or 4 times! One day we had ice cream for breakfast! It will always be a memory I will treasure thinking about that cute ice cream place!

Good thing we walked so much on our trip or that ice cream would have added a lot of extra weight:)

There is endless amounts of fun to be had at the village! We tried to do everything but couldn't even fit it all in! Some of the things that they offer are....

A carousel, another fun ride, a train ride, miniature golf, an arcade, a movie theater, horseback riding, fishing, swimming pools, a splash pad, a salon, a huge playground, a castle with lots of enchanted stuff inside, different places to eat (including pizza delivery), and parties every night!!! We could have stayed the entire week just at the village and not gone to any of the parks it was that wonderful!

Our whole crew on the carousel!!!!

Apparently we thought this ride was fun!

Daphne liked these balls at the arcade!

Choo choo.... 

Laynie loved the salon. She is such a girlie girl and loves make up and nail polish! All the volunteers at the salon were college girls on spring break!

Daphne got her nails done too!!! And Drake liked getting the airbrush tattoos!

The village mascot is Mayor Clayton and Miss Merry and I didn't get a picture of them but this was at a birthday party for Mayor Clayton. The parties they have every night vary. We only made it to a few but they are fun!

Another fun thing they do at the village is there is a gift fairy that comes for your wish child every night. They leave gifts and it was really cute. They left a few gifts for the other kids also! And on Easter Sunday some Bunnies went around and delivered a basket to every child! There was also an egg hunt on Easter!

Drake was giggling at a balloon maker here. He thought he was hilarious:)

Each wish child gets a star that they get and it gets hung up. There are thousands of stars and rooms and rooms full of them! It is really awesome to see. Laynie's star is in the castle and it has the red laser on it! It also is documented in their computer system so if we go back in 20 years we will be able to find it! So cool!!!!

We spent most evenings at the splash pad. It was weird that at 8:00 at night it was warm enough to be swimming and in Idaho is was snowing while we were gone! Daphne is a fish. She loves the water and has no fear! This picture was taken on the first night while we were touring the village and Daphne saw the water and there was NO stopping her! 

Laynie also loves splash pads because she can have her freedom in the water! 

The food was really good also! There were different places to eat at and it was so chill and easy to have our kids at the cafeteria and it was nice not to have the stress of keeping our kids well behaved at a restaurant! It was really special seeing all the other families on their wish trips! I felt something special for them. Every wish child was going through something different but they are all heroes that are fighting big battles! Throughout the Make-a-Wish process I was mostly so excited and grateful for the opportunity, but I couldn't help but have a few sad feelings that my daughter was being granted a wish through Make-a-Wish because she has a life-threatening condition! Every once in awhile I just get that shock of reality that this is Laynie's life! I'm so grateful she is doing so well though, and I am just soooo incredibly proud of her!!

These next pictures were taken while we were eating our icecream by the splash pad! It was so nice to get a glimpse of summer for the week!

Happy girl!!!! She definitely wore this big smile throughout the week. The great thing about the village is how relaxed it is. With 3 young kids doing things can be stressful and it was never stressful at the village! There were lots of kids around, a lot with special needs and everyone was understanding and so nice!

Me and my momma!

Surfs up dude!

It rained a little while we were there. I was surprised with how lush and green Florida was. They also had weird animals. We had a raccoon eating our garbage and we saw a lot of white albino looking squirrels. There were also some sort of wild turkeys/cranes/some sort of birds roaming around! Most afternoons/evenings it rained for a bit but it wouldn't last long and it would stop. We have a fun memory of playing and eating ice cream right outside the ice cream shop! 

Playing in the rain! This picture below was one of those special moments in life when you just feel soooo much happiness! I was sitting there watching my family run around, laugh, scream and play in the rain! It's hard to describe but it was a special memory that I never want to forget!!! I sure love my family! 

We sure wish we could live at the village! We miss it everyday!!! We are beyond grateful for the opportunity to stay there and we seriously will cherish those memories forever!!!

We bought a paver in Laynie's honor! There are tons of pavers throughout the village with kid's names on them and we enjoyed looking at them and looking where they were from. We didn't see any from Idaho but there probably was one somewhere! There were names from all over the world! We look forward to being able to go back and find her paver one day! We asked that it is placed near the ice cream shop since we loved it there! In the picture of them playing in the rain above you can see the pavers that I am talking about!!!

We love you Give Kids the World! We will see you again when we come back to volunteer!!!

To be continued...

Make a Wish: traveling to Orlando

Laynie's wish was granted from Make a Wish to GO TO DISNEYWORLD!!! We went from March 25-31st. I am going to do a whole bunch on posts about this trip because I want to post a lot of pictures because I want to remember this  many years down the road!!!

So to start out I am going to be boring and start with the trip to Orlando....

The day before we flew out we drove down to Utah to be closer to the airport. Laynie woke up with a cold and a fever that day! I was waiting for her to get sick because Drake had a cold earlier in the week. It made me sad for her that this had to happen on her special trip! 

But luckily when she woke up the next morning (very early for our 6am flight) she was feeling so much better. I gave her Tylenol for a low grade fever and she never needed anymore medicine! It really was a miracle she handled the cold so well!!!

I was sooooo nervous for the flight. We have to bring all of her supplies as a carry ons because we can't risk them getting lost so we have a lot of stuff and then our sweet little Daphne sometimes isn't so sweet so we were nervous how she would do! Luckily things went very well! It was a long day of travelling of course, but all the kids did very well!

A very kind flight attendant gave Laynie his real wings! It was very special and such a kind gesture!

We had 2 flights to get to Orlando! The next flight they made Laynie her own crown and made a special announcement that they had a princess on board! It was so cute!!!

Luckily we got a good nap out of this chick!!!

The kids got to see the cockpit and were amazed by all the buttons!

To be continued!!!