Day 3...A whale of a time!

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We had a T-riffic start to the day when we met Barney, Baby Bop, and BJ after breakfast at the resort. We even let the kids stay in their pajamas! The girls were so excited to meet these fun dinosaurs. They were however, a little upset that Barney and his friends could not talk. The girls just kept asking “What happened to their talking?” It was sort of funny because they did not question the lack of voice on any other characters…it must be too many Barney movies!
After getting our pictures taken with Barney, we loaded back into the van and were off to spend the day at Sea World. Jamahl was looking forward to the lack of princesses at Sea World and he is very fascinated by aquatic life so he was really looking forward to seeing all of the animals. If you have never been to Sea World, the main attractions are the different shows. Of course that means that everything is timed. We were hoping to have a more relaxed day than the one before but that is not how it turned out. After getting through security and ticketing, and getting our strollers, we went to see the sting-ray. Because we were with Make-a-Wish, we got 4 trays of smelly fish to feed to the rays. It was so funny to see Jamahl trying to feed them. He really wanted to but you had to hold the fish between your fingers, put your arm way under water, and let the rays swim over it. Sounds easy enough, but the whole time the rays are swimming over your arm they are sucking with quite a force and their fins are flapping up against your arm getting you all wet. It is quite the procedure. Well, Daddy had the camera, Grammie had Keyan, who was afraid of the whole thing, so that left me to grab the fish and show the kids how to do it!!!! It really was a neat experience. I think that most of our fish ended up just being thrown in, but at least they tried!
One of the other perks to being there with MAW is that you get to feed the dolphins and have a little one on one time with them. The problem again was that they only eat at certain times and we did not want to miss it. After talking with a staff member, we decided that we would catch the dolphin show and than come back to feed them in the cove. Off to the dolphin show!!!! Now, we get there about 20 minutes before the show started and there are NO seats. You also have to know that it was 90 degrees that day and if you know me at all, you know that I HATE the heat! We had to leave the strollers the entrance, push the wheelchair up this steep hill, while dragging the rest of the crew around trying to find a place to sit. We finally all squeeze into about 3 actual seats and settle in when what do I hear? McKenzy says, “Mommy, I have to go potty!” Everyone around me thinks it is funny, I do not! I take a deep breath, take her hand, lead her all the way back down the steep hill to find the nearest bathroom. We reach the bathroom and it is NOT air conditioned! I thought that I was going to die. At that point, if someone had offered to fly me back to Michigan where it was cold and rainy, I would have taken them up on the offer in a heartbeat! Anyhow, we made it back to the show, which was very fun to see. It is amazing what they can get the dolphins to do.
We stuck to our plan and headed over to feed the dolphins. We were taken right into the cove with a trainer and she brought a female dolphin right up on a ledge for us to feed and touch. Keyan was terrified and clawing at Grammie, so they stood back so that she would not be so scared. The poor little thing is even scared of a peaceful dolphin. We have long stopped trying to figure out her fears and just respect them. Poor Grammie practically had blood though! We had the best time interacting with the dolphins! They are a lot bigger than I expected and feel so smooth…the dolphin showed off for us by doing some tricks but was being pretty stubborn about most things. We told the trainer that we were very used to stubborn….maybe in another life I could become a dolphin trainer!
At this point in the afternoon, we had to get some lunch. We knew however, if we got lunch now, we would miss the Shamu show. Paul, Mom and I discussed it and knew that if we didn’t eat, we would all be miserable at the whale show anyways, so we sadly scrapped the show. We found a place to eat, waited in line for what seemed like forever, and renewed our energy with some chicken fingers! The kids were so much happier, I knew we had made the right decision. Mommy was finally cooled down and could function again and McKenzy was finally laughing again. We packed everything back up, got the map out, and were ready to come up with a new plan. We checked the time…and low and behold, we had time to get to the Shamu show!!! Not only did we get to the show, but we got great seats. I absolutely believe that God made time stand still. You have to realize that there is no way that we could have made it. I do not know how God did it, but I do know it was only with his help that we made it to see Shamu. Jamahl thought that he might want to sit in the splash zone so I found great seats right up front for he and Paul. You should have seen Jamahl's face after the show when he was pouring water out of his shoes. He was not amused!!! I thought it was kind of funny that Paul and Jamahl got totally drenched, but the two of them did not see the humor in it! What did they think the "splash zone" meant?
Next, we went to the shark exhibit and fed the smaller sharks which Jamahl thought was way cool! We hunted down the alligators, saw a few more creatures, bought great souvenirs for Jamahl, and than decided it was time to go so that we could get some dinner before the "Princess and Pirate Party"
Our girls had been planning for two weeks on going to the Princess and Pirate Party held at the resort. I had packed all of their fancy dresses, high heels for all four of them, we bought special hair spray for their princess 'dos, and sparkly make-up. We grabbed a quick dinner and than the transformation began. I got every ones dress on, Paul was in charge of the high heels, and Mom did their hair and make-up. Our resident pirate took care of himself and put his pirate shirt on. When the girls were finally ready, Ariel, Snow White, Aurora, and Cinderella all clip-clopped down to the Avenue of Angels where the party was being held. Abby lifted her dress up at the corners and took off. As we were walking, Sidney said, "I just feel so pretty!" Abagayle announced, "We have been waiting our whole lives to go to the ball!" We all agreed that we do indeed have a bunch of princesses on our hands!
Jamahl got to pick a bag of loot, make a treasure map, and play a few pirate games. The girls heard the music and just started dancing. There was a pirate DJ who led some of the dances and than announced that it was time for the pirates to choose a princess to dance with. Keyan latched onto her pirate and slow danced the entire song just looking up at her pirate. It was so precious. Sidney danced with Jamahl, and Abby and McKenzy danced with Miss Merry (go figure). After the final dance it was time to corronate the princesses and pirates. The stage was set up like a castle, and each child's name was called as they walked thru the door to get their crown or eye patch and sword. It was so cute. There is nothing like a bunch of kids not sure what they are supposed to be doing to make a group of adults laugh. I am unable to accurately describe the feel of magic in the air. The girls felt like true royalty. It was amazing. When all was said and done, I got them each to pose with Daddy for a picture and than tried to get some group shots. The problem was with Keyan....you see, there was Disney Princess music still playing over the speakers, so that meant that she just had to dance and sing along. She was up on the stage by herself surrounded by volunteers who were taking the set down. She did not care, she stood with her feet planted shoulder width apart, arms out wide singing the final note. Her tired, breathy, quiet voice was just as cute as ever. I stopped to watch her and it was if the world stopped. Everything sort of blurred except for Keyan singing her heart out. I could almost see the pixie dust shimmering around her. She was like an angel. You didn't notice the trach, you didn't notice crossed little eyes, you couldn't tell her feet are as flat as pancakes. She was perfect in every way. All I know, is Gods angels are working over time at Give Kids The World and we felt their presence so intensely.
You would think that that would end our day but no, we had one more surprise. We went back to our villa and got the kids into their pajamas when there was a knock on the door. We opened it up to find Miss Merry the bunny coming to tuck the kids into bed! You should have seen the girls faces. They could not believe it. Jamahl decided just to give her a high five and snuggle into bed himself, but not the girls. Miss Merry got right into bed with them all. She started a pillow fight, got everybody to jump on the bed, had a tickling war and basically just got the kids extremely hyper. It was so fun for them. Finally Miss Merry got them all into their beds with a kiss and hugged them all goodnight. It was a great ending to a wonderful night.

Day 2...the one true wish

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Today was the big day. Keyan's wish was to sing with Ariel. We had an appointment with Princess Ariel at 11:00am. We completely underestimated how long it would take us to get through breakfast at the gingerbread house. Everyone is so kind, and they all wanted to dote over the kids. We did not get into the van 9:45. After the 20 minute drive to Magic Kingdom, we had about 40 minutes to get to Ariel.....well, once again, we did not account for the walk from handicapped parking to the monorail. By the time we got to the monorail, we had three people in tears, one of whom was me!!! I was so worried we would miss our appointment! We rode the monorail to the park, went thru security (who had to go thru our bags of meds, Keyan's food syringes, nebulizer machines, and so much more!), made it thru the ticket turnstyles, and had 5 minuted to get to Ariel's grotto, which happens to be at the back of the park!!! Notice, we did not have strollers yet!!! I made the decision that we did not have time for strollers, took 30 seconds to explain to the kids that we were going to have to run past a lot of very fun things and we would come back to them but for now we had to get to ARIEL, and off we went. Mom pushed Keyan in her wheelchair, I grabbed two kids hands, Paul grabbed the other two, and we were off. We had to look pretty funny dragging 4 three years olds crying thru Magic Kingdom. Ah, memories that we will never forget!

We found he cast member in charge of Ariel's Grotto at 11:03! Not to bad...We explained who we were, they very kindly said, "We will take care of everything from here...don't worry." You have to understand that by this time there was an hour and a half wait to see Ariel and people were standing in line all over the place. The cast member took us thru a different entrance, held the line, and we were escorted in to meet Ariel. The girls were speechless. Keyan climbed right up next to Ariel and chatted for awhile. I explained that Keyan's one true wish was to sing with her so I started to help Keyan sing "Part of this World". Keyan knew more words than Ariel, but only the adults realized that, and even we did not care. Ariel spent about 15 minutes with us, we took lots of pictures, shed even more happy tears, played with Ariel's long red hair, and than said good-bye! It was an awesome experience.

After drying my tears, we took a minute to collect ourselves, put on our sunscreen, get a drink, and come up with a plan. We had to be in Epcot for our 1:50 reservations for lunch with the princesses, but we had some time to ride Dumbo, and the Carousel. On our way back to the front of the park we stopped into the Castle. The Castle now holds the Bippity Boppity Boutique where girls get transformed into princesses by the Fairy Godmother, for quite a large sum of money. Times that by 4 and it was not an option for us. However, as we were walking by, one of the Godmothers spotted us in our beautiful princess outfits and stopped us. She let the girls come into the salon and sprinkled Pixie Dust onto each of their heads, than led them to the mirror so that they could see. It was so special...and absolutely priceless! We were so touched.

We decided that we had better get to Epcot so that we did not have to rush.

We finally found the time to get strollers when we got to Epcot. What a difference a few wheels make! We took a potty break, fed Keyan, and made our way to Norway. I went to the booth to check in, and they just looked at me. I repeated, "we are the Hogans, party of 8 for a 1:50 reservation."The Lady said, "Oh, Stephanie, I am afraid that your reservation was for 1:15, it seems that you have missed it!" I tried to calmly explain that Make-a-Wish had made the reservations, I pulled out my paper which clearly said 1:50, pointed out my four princesses and handsome prince who were expecting to eat with their princess friends, looked her straight in the eye, and asked her "How are you going to get us into this lunch?" After a few phone calls and some negotiating, she informed us that they could squeeze us in at the next round of seating and we were welcome to wait inside in the air conditioning. Thank you Lord!!!!! We don't mind waiting as long as it is out of the heat!

While we were waiting, Jasmine noticed us in the lobby and came over to chat with the kids. As she was admiring the girls outfits she suddenly stopped and looked perplexed..."But where am I" she asked. "I see Belle, Aurora, Ariel, and Cinderella, but no Jasmine!" The girls faces were so cute as they had no idea what to say. I explained that we couldn't convince Jamahl to wear Jasmine so... we were sorry, but she was out of luck! She was so great with the kids and Daddy didn't mind looking at her either! When it was time to be seated, our first stop was to get our picture taken with Belle. She was so pretty and the first thing that she said to us in her high pitched, princess voice was, "Oh, my friend Ariel said that she met you this morning!" How did she know that? We were all very impressed with the Disney magic. After pictures with Belle, we were seated. Throughout the lunch, we met Aurora, Jasmine, Ariel, and Cinderella. They all spent lots of time at our table and enjoyed the kids immensely. McKenzy had a constant shrill of excitement bursting out of her as each different princess came into the room. She would shout out, "Oh Abby, here comes Cinderella! Oh Keyan, here comes Ariel!" It was so cute how they got excited for each other. Lunch was fantastic and God Bless Jamahl for hanging in there thru all the princesses calling him Prince Charming! He loved the Mickey Mouse shaped pasta and got a glowing Captain Hook on his drink. It was not all bad!
After lunch, we figured we had better divide and conquer. Paul took Jamahl to do test track and the rest of us went on a search for Snow White. We found her in Germany and got our place in line. Poor Keyan had had enough so she went to sleep. She even slept thru meeting Snow White so Snow White carefully moved Keyan's ponytail, gave her a kiss, and put her ponytail back. It was so sweet. The dwarf Dopey was helping Snow White and after giving Abby a kiss, she squealed, "I got a dopey kiss!" Their enthusiasm was contagious. We met back up with the boys, did a few more things and a little shopping, then back to the resort for Christmas!
Thursday night, GKTW is transformed into a winter wonderland complete with Santa, presents, penguins, snowmen, reindeer, a parade, snow, Christmas music, and lots more. We made it back just in time to get in line to meet Santa. He had this magic glowing light on his finger that he "found" in each of the kids hands and than it magically flew up to the sky. All five of them were in complete amazement. It was so cool. After getting our picture with Santa, the kids got to pick a gift from racks and racks of presents. It was like a dream come true for them. The best part of the night though was Keyan dancing. She danced and danced. At one point, she had all the characters in a circle around her and she was in the middle dancing her heart out. It was amazing. She had not been feeling well on and off through out the day, but to look at her you never would have guessed she struggles with lung disease and cerebral palsy. Her hips were swaying, her hands clapping, and her feet stomping. I will never forget the pure enjoyment on her face as she was dancing. I know that God gave me that moment to hold onto in the dark days. Long after the music stopped, she was dancing....we finally pulled her away so that we could get some dinner into the other kids. We ordered pizza from the resort pizzeria. It was a late night but a great one. Again, we made memories that are engraved in our hearts.

Day 1... Our Magical Trip

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We officially started our trip on October 15, 2008 at 4:45am. One of our great friends arrived a little after 4 in the morning to help get the girls ready and pull any loose ends together. We started getting the kids up at 4:25 so that we could get them dressed and out the door. They started out a little groggy, but it only took 10-15 minutes and the house was alive with excitement. A limo arrived at 4:45 and we were on the road to the Muskegon airport by 5am! The kids thought that the limo was really cool and quite frankly, I decided that it was quite a nice spacious way to travel....forget the next mini-van, on to a limo! We had checked in the night before so we just had to dig through all of the paperwork and check our luggage. With the new fees for luggage, we had manged to pack all of our stuff in to three large suitcases, but of course, one of them was overweight!!! After shifting around a few things, final hugs to Poppy, and we were off to security. Every one's shoes had to come off, backpacks and jackets onto the belt, our 2 bags full of prescription drugs.....I was DREADING this part, but the agents did a great job getting us through with a lot of patience. We had everything right except that I had a lip gloss that is considered a gel and it was not in a baggie!!! "Throw the stupid thing out, just let us get through this line!!!!" Finally, we were on the plane. Everyone is settling in, it is still dark outside so we can't see anything, the kids are doing great. The flight attendant then informs us that momentarily she will serve complimentary juices, water, and coffee. McKenzy screams at the top of her lungs, "Coffee!!! I can't wait to get coffee, I really need some coffee!" Everyone on the plane sure got a chuckle out of that!

All of the flights were on time, we made our connections and we arrived in Orlando at 11:30am. We were staying at "Give Kids the World" and they had a volunteer meet us at the airport to navigate getting our luggage and getting our van. I saw him holding the sign with Keyan's name and I could not help but start crying! He led us to our van, helped watch the kids while we put all the car seats in, and gave us directions to the resort. He was great and not bothered by my tears at all. He just smiled, as if he knew they were because I felt as if the weight of the world was being slowly lifted off of my shoulders.

I want to explain a little about the resort. GKTW is a resort only for families who are visiting Orlando with a wish organization. It is run by 130 full and part time staff and 3000 volunteers!!! The whole place is designed for the kids and everything is handicapped accessible. The most amazing part of the whole thing is that every other family there has a special needs child. We had an instant bond with all of the other families...they all had medical equipment, knew the strains of medical needs, all the moms had dark circles under their eyes from lack of sleep. It was life changing to experience normalcy. Keyan was never different, just special! The only thing that made us stand out was the fact that we had quadruplets, and that is a fun reason to stand out! I could go on and on about the village...it is really a piece of heaven on earth.

The first thing we did after arriving at the resort was get lunch and ice cream at the ice cream shop. One of the first things that the volunteer running the ice cream shop told us was that this was a place for kids and they could do whatever they wanted! They really live by that motto...ice cream for breakfast, whip cream on everything, endless rides on the carousel, and so much more. After lunch I headed to orientation and the rest of the crew headed to the pool. It was handicapped accessible, so Keyan was able to walk around by herself and she loved the Independence. It was a great way to spend the afternoon of a very long day. We went back to the villa to get settled and than went to dinner. The meals are served in a gingerbread house with a huge cupcake connected. There are several options for dinner and plenty of desserts! There are volunteers to do everything...they carry your tray, refill your drinks, set your table, or whatever else you may need. It is incredible. Near the end of dinner, Mayor Clayton and Miss Merry came around to greet us. They are the bunnies that run the village. The kids LOVED them. We got lots of pictures hugging Miss Merry! After dinner, we made a quick trip to Wal-mart to get a few necessary things and returned to the villa to collapse into bed......dreaming of Disney, and the fun we will have tomorrow.

We are back home

I know that some of you are anxiously awaiting news about our vacation. We had an amazing time, and I promise lots of pictures and stories, but Abagayle has the flu, Keyan has pneumonia, and I am exhausted. More to come....I promise!!! Here is to hoping that the rest of us don't get sick!

3 more days!

Oh my goodness what a flurry of excitement! We are down to three days before we leave for Disney and we can all hardly stand it. Not only have I been doing all the last minute planning and errands, but to make it even more special, we have been receiving some very special mail! A group of sewers from the Internet adopted out family and have sewn custom clothing for the kids to wear in Disney. When I was asked if we would like to participate, I was cautiously thrilled. I was excited, but also had not idea what we would be getting. Fast forward to this week. We have gotten the most beautiful, handsome, amazing, custom made clothes. Not only did this group of strangers sew for the kids, but they must have taken enough time to "get to know us" because they made all of the girls stuff coordinate! I could not have been happier. I am telling you, this experience has renewed my faith in humanity. These people are so giving and generous. hey have blessed us beyond belief and truly changed our lives with their kindness. I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

We started Preschool!

Wow.,..there is a lot of excitment in our house this week. Not only are we 8 days from Disney, but the girls started preschool today. They have been asking about going back ever since we visited two weeks ago. They were thrilled beyond belief....and so is mom!! Funny how I cried when Jamahl went to preschool but I can't stop smiling when I think about 4 hours a week of time to myself!!! No, really, it will be so good for them and they think they are so big since they are going to school. We have an amazing story that goes along with being able to put them into preschool. I won't bore you with all of the details, but not only are the teachers thrilled to have our unique girls, but there are paramedics right across the hall to help keep Keyan safe! God has opened up door after door after door and we could not feel better entrusting all four of our girls to these teachers. We can't wait to see how it goes!