June 14th Homecoming!

Jul 222012

Well folks, this is it. The last day we are to spend in Florida. We are excited to get home, but still sad to be leaving this whole experience. I guess that is why it has taken me so long to get this posted. Florida was great to us, other than the heat. The people at all of the Disney parks and at Give Kids the World were fantastic.

We were treated like such royalty that it is still hard to believe, even looking back at it almost a month later. And we are not the only ones that get that treatment down there. It is just amazing.

So the last day we had only 1 thing to do for sure, and that was be at the airport by 4:00. We started off the day early. Grandma’s flight was early that morning, she had to be at the airport at 5:00 AM! So I was up early to take her and then get back for another hour of sleep before we got everything packed up and out of the hotel.

We soon saw that we had a lot of stuff coming home with us that we didn’t have on the way down. They told us to bring a duffle bag to Give Kids the World but it took 2 plus a mailed box to get it home. More on that later. We did manage to get everything into the van, after folding down one of the seats into the floor. Stow and Go seats are great.

With only a few hours left in Florida and our Disney tickets expired, we headed to Downtown Disney to let the kids spend the last of their souvenir money. That place was great, all of the Disney stores from all 5 parks crammed into one spot. There were individual stores for everything and then the biggest gift shop I have ever seen that had everything. I think it was bigger than the one in California.

So, shop we did at the kitchen store, Christmas store and the lego store. Eventually, it was time to go. We had to ship some things home and get another duffle bag to send things home in. Walmart in Kissimmee must have had people doing hte same thing over and over because there were displays of duffles and boxes.

We stuffed 2 more duffle bags than we came with with stuffed animals and little things, and then we stuffed a box with the hats that the kids got from Amelia’s jungle parade as well as Indiana Jones’ hat and the cowboy hats that they got in Give Kids the World. There were even a few toys that ended up in the box, we just didn’t have anywhere else to put them!

The next hurdle was to find the post office. We had a vague idea where it was from the map the front desk of the hotel gave us, but we had yet another torrential rainstorm to navigate to find it. At least we were in the van for this one, but still it was raining harder than we had seen it so far on the trip. At one point we drove under the freeway and traffic was almost stopped due to the rain and the water on the road.

Finally, we found the post office and shipped the box home. Then we headed to the airport, pushing our timetable but still in good shape. At the airport everything went smooth, even getting through security which took a lot longer than it should have. After security you board a shuttle that takes you from the main building that has a hotel in it (?) to the terminals where the planes are.

It was at the gate where we got to wait. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:30 but got pushed to 6:50 and then it was undetermined. We got on the plane at almost 7:30. Come to find out, due to the rain and the big storms, the flight crew that was supposed to be on our plane got re-routed to Tampa and had to fly from there to Orlando to get back to Salt Lake. Just took time.

The flight home was uneventful for us. We didn’t have a connecting flight to catch. Some people on the flight missed their connections by over an hour. One interesting thing about this flight, they had the TV’s in the seat backs and there was a setting to watch the progress of the plane on the way home. Using this, we watched the little plane icon fly from Orlando, out over the gulf of Mexico, over New Orleans and then over all of Texas before heading North again over Arizona. Apparently there was a huge storm system over the center part of the country that they were trying to avoid.

Finally, we landed! After that it was rather quick to get the van from parking, get loaded up and get home. Home was a nice place to get back to.

So yet again we want to thank everyone who was involved in Amelia’s wish, from Grandmas and Grandpas, to the staff and volunteers at Make A Wish, to the staff and volunteers at Give Kids the World, to all of those employees at Disney that truly made out experience wonderful. We will never forget all of the things that we were able to do on that trip and how much kindness and hope you all gave us.

Thanks again.