Waiting for dates!

[kailatilear]

What a sweet child. He reminds me of my son, he has a heart of gold and always thinking of everyone else before himself. I am so glad he is getting his wish. He trully deserves it.

 

[mjarecki]

Our wish granters emailed yesterday and they are taking us out to dinner next Thursday for Michael's send off party. Should be fun!

 

[mjarecki]

.

 

[mjarecki]

It's been like Christmas around the Jarecki house this past week! Everyday we come home to more Big Give items. We are overwhelmed by everyone's generosity! Here 's some pics.

Thank you to Erica (2girlsmommy) for the awesome Sea World shirts that she made for everyone! We are very excited to feed the dolphins!

The boys were thrilled to see these Lightnight McQueen shirts made by Andrea-can't wait to wear them to Hollywood Studios!

Thank you so much to Wendy (Billwendy) for the really cool embroidered Disney shirts. Michael was especially excited to have Donald as he is probably his favorite Disney character! We are going to wear them on Friday when we go to MVMCP.

Michael was so excited when he opened these tie-dyed t-shirts for the whole family. He has always wanted a tie-dyed t-shirt. He even wore it to his best friend's birthday party today, I couldn't get it off him! Thanks to Libby (loodlow) for the cool shirts!

Thank you to Chiara Osborne for the cool pirate Mickey and Minnie shirts for our family. Pirates of the Caribbean is our family's favorite ride! Can't wait to wear them!

Next I would like to thank Cheryl Stees and the Shires family for some gifts for Eric and I. We go this awesome pink (my favorite color) bag with an M for Mindy on it and really neat handmade toiletries bags for dad and I complete with all the necessary items! My husband was really excited about this!

These two pictures are of all the many fun items we've received from numerous people that will hopefully keep the boys busy on the plane ride, that is if I can keep them from playing with it all before then! Thank you to:
Glenda Castro (gcast1), Heather, Ashley and Emily Turner (birdie757), Erica Barker again (2girlsmommy), and The Graham family! I hope I didn't miss anyone, I'm trying to keep lists, but we've received so much and the boys just tear into the packages, I keep loosing track of it all. Thanks so much!

Next is the Park Survival Kit-filled with all the necessary items to make it through a day at the parks. It was filled with a sewing kit, ponchos, snacks, gel lights (boys really liked these!) and many more things! Thank you to Allison (TEB173) for the great stuff!

And last but not least, thank you to the Davis family for the autograph books and pens. The boys are anxious to get all the autographs they can!


Thank you so much everyone for the wonderful gifts. Michael is truly thrilled. We can't believe how many wonderful people are out there on disboards who do such great things for us wish families. We can't wait to come back from our trip and join the Big Give in giving back to other wish families.

 

[cogero]

So glad to know that you Love POTC. I was nervous about that.

I love looking at your pictures

 

[billwendy]

WOW!!!! Those are such awesome pictures!!! I cant wait to see you all in your shirts together!! I hope Michael is enjoying this!! you guys sure deserve it!!!

 

[rcq925]

Love all the big gives!!! How cool!

Hoping we run into you at GKTW!!!

Can you believe how close we are?

 

[Emilyswish]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing all the pictures!

 

[xanphylus]

WoW! I love all the big give's and the pictures! I really like your "m" bag!

 

[katied]

I'm glad the scrapbook arrived ok, and hope you're able to enjoy it and your trip pictures for years to come. Have a great time


(please pm or email me if you have any issues at all with the account)

 

[WDWAtLast]

I am glad you like the M bag. I had to pink between pink and green and I am glad I chose pink! Have a magical trip- Can't wait to hear all about it!

 

[Loodlow]

Awesome to see Michael in his tie-dye! Hope you all have a fabulous time!

Libby

 

[cajunfan]

Have a MAGICAL trip!

I can't wait to hear all about it!

 

[brookerene]

I was reading your PTR and have really enjoyed it...especially the photos of the Big Give. They are always fun to see! I see you left from Omaha.... did you go through NE MAW? We are too in April! So your schedule and times have given me ideas for ours! I'll be following along when you get your TR up here soon!....
God Bless!

 

[mjarecki]

Finally, I'm having some time to work on our trip report. Here it goes! We left early in the morning on November 15th (around 4am). A limo picked us up and even rolled out the red carpet for Michael.

We flew from Omaha to St. Louis and then on to Orlando. We landed around 11:30 am and a nice volunteer from Give Kids the World was there waiting for us to show us to our rental car. We also met another family that was on our flight from St. Louis and we ended up really bonding with them throughout the trip.
We arrived at Give Kids the World and got a bite to eat before checking into our villa.
We got a villa in the new part, right by the playground.

I went to orientation and the boys went to the playground and to the pool to check things out.

After swimming we went to Downtown Disney for the first night. We had dinner reservations at Fultons Crab House. It was delicious. The boys had a great time at the toy store spending their gift cards.

The boys had a great time the first day. We got home the first night and they crashed.

 

[billwendy]

AWESOME!!!! Looks like a great day!!! How was Michaels health and endurance through the trip?

 

[mjarecki]

Day 2 of our trip started out with breakfast at the house of hearts and some exploring around GKTW.

Michael's favorite character Avatar was there on our 2nd day. He was so excited to see him.

We went to Universal Studios on our first day of parks. We had never been there so this was exciting for the boys. Unfortunately a lot of their rides were to big for the boys. We were really excited about seeing the Harry Potter part of the park since we are huge Harry Potter fans. The boys had a great day. We tried going without a stroller and quickly found out that that was a dumb idea. After that day we did strollers the rest of the time. We stayed at Universal Studios until they closed. Michael's favorite ride was the griffin roller coaster ride.

Love this picture of Lance!

A long day makes for sleepy children!

We really enjoyed Universal Studios and decided that we would spend the last part of our final day there.

 

[mjarecki]

Day 3 was Wednesday. We knew that we were going to the luau at the Polynesian resort that night so we decided to go to a disney park. We decided to head to Magic Kingdom since the boys like it best.
First we did breakfast at the House of Hearts of course. We loved how nice everyone was there. I felt so guilty letting them carry my tray for me, but there's no arguing with them!
We first went to Pirates of the Caribbean because that was the boys' favorite ride last time we were there.

Many of our pictures have Lance holding a stuffed rabbit. This was Beans, the traveling rabbit from his Kindergarten class. We were supposed to take pictures of him and then come back and write in a journal about his time with us.

Over the week the boys and Eric rode Thunder Mountain over 40 times-boy does that GAC pass and the GKTW button help! Luckily the week that we were there (week before Thanksgiving) isn't busy at all so for many of the rides we didn't even need the button since there wasn't a line, but on the big rides it was really nice. I was surprised that I really didn't get too many bad looks when using it. I only had 2 times that I had to explain to someone why we were going to the front of the line and that was at character meet and greets. Both people were very understanding. I'm sure on busier weeks there would have been more annoyed people.

I love the nights at Magic Kingdom, and now especially during the holiday season with the lights.

On Wednesday night we had tickets to go to the luau dinner show at the Polynesian resort. It was so much fun. We would definetly do again.

Wednesday was a great day. So much fun! We bought the luau tickets on our own and I'm glad we did it.

 

[mjarecki]

Day 4 was Thursday and we decided to go to Sea World because I had heard that you could make that day a shorter day since we wanted to get back to GKTW for Christmas that night.
Michael was very excited about the carousel at GKTW. We rode it every day after breakfast.

So at Sea World we felt like we were the only people there, it was not crowded at all! We had a great time feeding the dolphins and sting rays. We did both activities several times. Wish kids get free food for both so make sure you do this several times throughout the day! Other than that we were a little disappointed with Sea World. There weren't any rides that the boys were big enough for and the rest of the exhibits of animals were not as great as what we have at our local zoo.

This is my favorite picture!
Here we are at the Shamu show. It wasn't nearly as long as I had thought it would be. It's a long hike up to the stadium for the show and then the show was only about 1/2 hour.

After Sea World we headed home for Christmas at GKTW. We were one of the first families in line, which worked out great because it gave us a lot more time to enjoy the party afterwards.

Ice cream time!

It's snowing!

 

[mjarecki]

Day 5 was Friday and we planned to go to a disney park and then to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party that night. We started the day out by doing Michael's star and their pillows.

We then decided to start the day at Epcot and head over to Magic Kingdom in the afternoon.
We went to the character meet and greets first. I think Epcot has the best character meet and greets because they're all centrally located close to the entrance of the park.

We rode several rides and had lunch in England!

After Epcot we headed to Magic Kingdom. We rode our favorite Buzz Lightyear ride several times. Then went to MVMCP. The parade was nice and we really enjoyed the extra time in the park. We thought that we would try to stay until midnight, but the boys were sleeping in the stroller by 10.