After the soaking of a lifetime...for SOME members of the Campbellscot family...
the members who mocked and abandoned the Saintly MissCammie...
*ahem*
it was time to move on...
Sally actually didn't get too ruffled with her wetness. She doesn't mind being wet really...and since we'd been thouroughly drenched on Splash Mountain, Sally was more than aware of that was *like*...once she's been through something once, she doesn't flap and flail as much the second time!
and since her brilliant step mama had dressed her for Niagara Falls conditions, she wasn't too worse for wear!
Teddy was bummed that he didn't get MORE wet!
He ran to his daddy for a hug so that he could "borrow" some splash!
The clouds rolled in not too long after we got off the ride.
Sally and I went into the bathroom and I set about drying her off as much as possible. She really was dripping wet. I didn't want her sitting in the kid transporter and forming a puddle. Cuz ick.
As a former COMPETITIVE swimmer
, I am privy to the secret of the "swim towel". It's basically the same thing a car wash uses...it's a shammie towel. They soak up an amazing amount of water and once they are soaked, you just wring them out and they are ready to soak up more! AND they dry incredibly fast as well...I just happened to have one in my handy dandy park bag!
That's called THINKING AHEAD!
They are wonderful towels to have on hand. They aren't very big and they are VERY useful. Not just on "wet ride" days. They are great for those frequent downpours that happen so often in Florida. Having sopping wet hands while you are trying to shop is NOT fun...or when you have an ADR and are required to run through the downpour to get to the restaurant. Even if you have a poncho, there are just parts that get soaked. It's nice to have a towel on hand that dries all wetness immediately. Seriously. Try it y'all. You will NOT be sorry!
Maybe I'm just over sensitive to being WET...but seriously...how fun is it to be sopping wet on any part of your body if you are not swimming? It's not fun. At all...or I'm just extremely fussy...which is true...but what were talking about again?
OH YES...wet Sally.
I whipped out my handy dandy swimmers towel and went about drying off the Sally!
I got the drips out of her hair first...Sally really dislikes drippy hair.
really I don't know WHERE the child gets this fussiness...
*ahem*
By the time we emerged from the bathroom she was mostly dry. Those quick dry shorts might be a bit pricey they are worth every penny! Especially when there is a swimmers towel to help them along!
And wouldn't y'all just KNOW It...about two seconds after leaving the bathroom, the rain started to fall.
I brought out the ponchos and we all suited up Disney style!!
I made a mental note that Sally was pert near too big for the kids size poncho. Goodness these kids were growing like WEEDS!
The little ones jumped into the kid transporter and we were off.
It wasn't raining too hard, so we didn't exactly have to run...we sort of wandered and looked at stuff.
We came upon the drummer folk and Jay stopped to let the kids watch. Then he disappeared!
When he returned he had two HUGE ice cream cones and a fresh cold diet coke for MOI!
Jay is so funny sometimes. Normally we would NEVER let the kids eat that amount of ice cream in one sitting. Sally and Teddy actually aren't huge sweets eaters as it is...I mean, they'll eat candy no problem...they certainly wouldn't ever turn it down...but they are both pretty good about saying "I've had enough". But Jay knew that this was a Disney thing...a moment. There was something magical in presenting the kids with their very own giant monster sized ice cream cones!
He had gotten a chocolate cone for our resident chocoholic Teddy, and a Vanilla for Sally...their favorite things in a huge quantity! Teddy was BESIDE HIMSELF.
His voice went up about five octaves as he squealed "I GET TO LICK ALL OF IT?!"
I did my very best not to picture the near future when most of that huge ice cream cone was going to be EVERYWHERE but in his mouth...b/c I didn't want to ruin the moment. It wasn't a big moment, but it was special just the same!
Jay went to give Sally her cone but she shook her head.
"Can you give it to MissCammie to hold, just for a second daddy? Can you please?"
So Jay handed it over to me. Sally jumped out of the kid transporter and straight into her daddy's arms.
"Thank you Daddy!! I love you to the moon and back again twice! I love you even MORE than that..."
yeah...I'm a big old sniffly mess even NOW thinking of that.
Jay held Sally for a minute. It was wet and raining, but he held her anyway. This had become the way of Sally's hugs this summer...where once she could hug her daddy in a free and easy way, with the knowledge that there would be a million more hugs behind it...she had started to hang on, like THIS hug might be the last hug for a while and she wanted to wrap up in every second she could...because every single second counts.
I just stood there and didn't even try to stop the weepies that INSISTED on making an appearance every five seconds on this trip. Sally KILLS ME with this. Luckily it was raining so my tears mingled with the rain and nobody knew a thing...except for the very unladylike sniff-sniff-sniffing I was doing.
Thank the good Lord for Teddy...as he chose that moment to say,
"Umm, MissCammie...I apparently got ice cream cone in my ear..."
Yeah...APPARENTLY he did...I do NOT know how.
So I dried up the tears and asked Teddy to refrain from feeding ANY part of his body that was not his mouth and reminded him that his mouth was on the FRONT of his head, not the side.
Teddy found this uproariously funny.
By that time Sally had accepted her cone and gotten back into the kid transporter.
We watched the drummers for a bit. I held Jay's hand and tried to be in the moment the way Jay was. He was not thinking about the loss the children have needlessly suffered. That they shouldn't be in a place where an 8 year old is acutely aware of the "moments" in life that most kids take for granted. It's not right. It's unfair and DANG IT ALL I want somebody PUNISHED for it.
QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
(clearly I am the product of a very nasty divorce...so having to relive childhood pain through children I love very much makes for a lot of QUACKing and generally being P-O'd! Which is one of the myriad reasons I am in therapy! I am work in progress!)
Luckily for me...and for the kids, that wasn't Jay at all. As I've pointed out before... Jay is the master of "letting it go" and claiming that moment...he was in it. Sally was in it. Teddy had *it* all over him.
I stood alone trying to keep my inner Donald quiet.
He's a sensitive soul. He loves the kids and he doesn't want them to hurt.
Donald didn't have too much time to ruminate though, b/c a VERY loud rumble of thunder got my attention.
It was time to head for the gates, cuz it was fixin to POUR!
Sally had daintily eaten most of her cone and manged to get it all into her mouth. I was impressed that she had eaten a good bit of it! Teddy of course was wearing the majority of his ice cream. He was smiling from ear to ear though. I was trying to imagine the sugar high that was fixin to hit him in the next few minutes!
I wiped him down, literally, from HEAD to TOE. When he was reasonably clean looking, we took off.
As we headed to the gates I heard Sally shout "MissCAMMIE!! LOOK! LadyBird lights!!"
I had grown up with the term "ladybird", not "ladybug". (they are called Lady Birds in Ireland!) I had told Sally and Teddy this, and Sally found this to be a wonderful alternative to the word BUG! She used it whenever she could!
Yup...LadyBird lights!
I was sad to be leaving so soon. We had missed SO MUCH of the park...but there just wasn't time for everything.
Jay and I had reservations at Artist Point that evening. We had LOVED Artist Point last year on our honeymoon. The food was FANTASTIC. The kids had a reservation for the Cub's Den. I had to get everyone bathed and into clean clothes, myself and Jay into a "slightly dressy" state,...I was feeling very frenzied all of a sudden. It had gotten a little later than I had intended.
We dropped off the kid transporter and bid good-bye to Animal Kingdom! It had been fun!! We'd had a full day what with nekkid babies on the bus, dinosaurs, Zebra Eggs and Kali River Rapids. It had been hot as all get out, but we'd had a grand time!
We collected the kids and RAN towards the bus stop. We made it to the covered waiting area JUST IN TIME. I'm not kidding when I say the sky opened up and oh MY how it poured!
Sally and Teddy were mesmerized for a few moments, just watching the absolutely OBESE rain drops fall from the sky with such fury and force that they exploded upon hitting the ground. This was aggressive rain! It was NOT playing!
Teddy looked up at me and said,
"MissCammie, it's even raining UP!"
He was right...when the drops hit the puddles they splashed upwards quite a ways.
goodness...felt like Texas!!
A family with two girls around Sally and Teddy's age joined us not too much later.
Sally chitty chatting!
The magic of Disney went to work and Sally struck up a conversation with the little girl that was her age. Teddy didn't need any magic. He just started talking to the little girl that was HIS age. It wasn't a minute before he had her hunting for BUGS under the benches!
How COOL is Teddy playing it?!
The bus sure was taking its sweet time! Once the time frenzy set in, I was finding it difficult not to check my cell phone every five seconds. We still had four hours until our reservation, so we were fine on time. I was just being a nervous Nellie.
I decided to help that along by calling the Pet Hotel to check on my fur baby!
(Y'all will be glad to know that he was doing fine! He had was having a blast at Doggie Daycamp! I asked the person I was talking to if she would please give him a big hug and a kiss from his family and tell him that we missed him terribly...*crazydogmommuch?* She said she would certainly do so!)
Finally the bus pulled in. My goodness it was raining hard! Teddy was full of squeals as he hopped on to the bus! He had never SEEN rain this big!
Sally scurried towards the back seats. I followed behind her. I was already shivering. As I sat down near the window, Sally patted the seat beside her and said "Daddy will you sit next to me?" So Jay sat down next to Sally. Teddy joined in by climbing over Sally and plopping into my lap!
Sally followed his lead and climbed into Jay's lap, so Jay scooted one over so he was sitting next to me. The Campbellscot's were cuddled up all together in the warmth of the "engine seats". Happiness was ours!
Teddy took this moment, of course, to point out that "Lookit, we're a family all together! We're all sitting together like LIONS!"
Oh Teddy is just too funny.
It was a nice bus ride. It was quiet and warm...the rain was pouring down outside...it was very COZY!! Nobody was naked...nobody needed saving. We were able to just sit and *be* together...even ME.
As we were pulling in to the Wilderness Lodge I found myself wanting to stay on that bus. I wanted keep a hold of the kids and of Jay...of myself...for just a bit longer.
I turned to Jay with every intention of telling him that I thought perhaps we should cancel the Artist Point reservation...to tell him that I really wanted to stay together...
but he beat me to it!
I had opened my mouth to give word to my thoughts when Jay said,
"Hey Cam...would you be really upset if we maybe didn't do Artist Point tonight? I really want to keep all of us together tonight...would that be okay?"
I love my husband.
Of course I could NOT control myself. I sniffled and I smiled and nodded at him and said,
"Took the words right out of my mouth babe! Let's just be together...I love it!"
Things had changed too much for us in the last few months. There was just no point in being at Disney with the kids and not being WITH them. Not for the Campbellscot's anyhow...not this year. Every second counted.
Sally was OVERJOYED at the change of plans. She was NOT feeling the "kids club". She had been okay with the idea when she knew she didn't have a choice, but once plans changed I could SEE the relief on her face.
She was right...and really, I was relieved too. The frenzied feeling had been replaced with a calm and a sense of relief. I didn't need to rush...Sally didn't need to get her worry wart on about the unknown of a new situation...There would be no anxiety tonight. We were sticking together.
Like Lions!
and because every second counted.
up next:The Night the Lights went out in Disney!
, but hey we're used to being wet we live in Scotland after all
I am Italian and Irish, but I have the lovely Irish skin...which translates into lots of sunblock...for me and DS, who unfortunately inherited my Irish skin. 
Glad you managed to stay dry! 
I also cannot wait to see how Sally reacts to being soaked! Waiting for more!
and having to tell them that I am uncomfortable with that as I don't know them....they will say "Oh i'm just running to the bathroom...or to get a soda...or to get popcorn" or fill in the blank...but I can't believe it when a parent does that..amazes me EVERY time...
