Amy's 'momentary trouble'

May 25th –

7:15am…that’s what the clock displays as it beeps incessantly near my head. One by one we get up, shower and get ready for a big day. Hope skips around the hotel room saying ‘I’m going to see Cinderella!’ By the time everyone has finished getting ready, it’s about 8:10, that gives us a little more than an hour before the bus arrives to take us to the Magic Kingdom. We go downstairs to the hotels free breakfast; it was served buffet style, it wasn’t very hot, but it was filling and best of all it was free! The busses come every hour starting at 8:05am and the last one returns from the parks at 12:15am.
There’s a funny thing about reading that I’ve discovered, the more you read, the more you learn…keep that in mind as I continue. Our bus driver’s name was Bill, he was about 68 years old, very nice and he LOVED to talk! He asked people where they were from, he told really bad jokes and told us trivia about Disney, for example: Did you know that Disney World employs 68,000 people? Also, Disney’s Magic Kingdom has the second largest parking lot in the United States (they make $1 million dollars daily in parking fees alone)? Anyway, Bill dropped off the people going to Animal Kingdom first and then as he pulled to a stop at Epcot, he said ‘last stop!’ After everyone else left the bus, we asked him about going to the Magic Kingdom and he said, ‘No, that bus leaves on the even hours and goes to the Magic Kingdom & MGM Studios. This bus is an odd hours bus and goes to the Animal Kingdom & Epcot.’ I looked at the bus schedule again and read it a little more carefully…WOW, there it was, right there in front of me! After explaining our misunderstanding, Bill was gracious enough to take pity on our Wisconsin family and took us over to the Magic Kingdom.
We finally made it into the Magic Kingdom and because the sun and heat where so oppressive, we go to buy Amy a good sun hat and we pick up a couple autograph books for the kids as well. Just as we leave that shop, we hear fanfare trumpets and looking up towards Cinderella’s castle, see that Cinderella’s coronation is beginning. If you don’t know already, Hope (our 5 year old) absolutely loves Cinderella! So, we quickly make it up near the castle and watch as each Disney princess is officially announced; Jasmine, Snow White, Belle and Aurora were all there then Cinderella comes out in her beautifully elegant blue ball gown and is crowned princess. Somewhere during this, Hope, eyes as big as dinner plates and a smile as bright as the sun, turns to Amy & I and says, ‘Thank you for making my dream come true!’ Now, you tell me all of you fathers out there, if your 5 year old little girl turned to you and said that, wouldn’t you get a lump in your throat the size of Kansas? That simple little statement set the tone for a family trip of a lifetime! We will have memories of this time for the rest of our lives!
We rode many many rides, Amy even went with Trevor on Space Mountain! We also saw some really cool shows; They have a show called PhillharMagic, it’s a 3D all senses attraction where Mickey is supposed to come out and Magically direct an orchestra, but Donald finds Mickey’s hat and well…everything goes downhill from there! Trumpets and drums come flying at you and as Donald splashes into water, the audience too is lightly sprayed with water! And the smells of different items in the scenes like apple pie is wafted toward the audience! Quite the show! We also tracked down and got a lot of autographs; Woody & Jesse, Goofy, Mickey & Minnie and of course ALL of the princesses! As the day wound down, we sat along Liberty Square and watched the Electric Parade. After that, we wondered over to the front side of Cinderella’s castle to watch the fireworks. This display was incredible! And really took me back to my childhood watching the beginning of The Wonderful World of Disney when Tinkerbell waved her wand and fireworks went off above Cinderella’s castle and hearing ‘When you wish upon a star.’ That was exactly what happened. After the fireworks, we made it back to where our bus would pick us up and it was about 11:00pm…what a day! We made it back to the hotel and not surprisingly, Hope fell asleep on the bus. We were all pretty much wiped out and decided that we’d take the 10:15am bus back to the Magic Kingdom the next day and sleep in!

May 26th –

I got up before everyone else this morning and went across the street to the CVS (like Walgreens) and bought some milk and donuts and brought them back to the hotel for breakfast. We ate and watched the local news and found out that there was a 40% chance of thunderstorms today. Looking outside, you couldn’t tell that because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but evidently because of the ocean the weather can and does change quickly down here. We easily make the 10:15am bus and discover Bill is our driver again (but we are on the right bus this time!) and true to form, he had some more trivia: Did you know that the Disney theme parks sit on more than 57,000 square acres and is bigger than the city of San Francisco? Disney operates 500 busses daily that exclusively transports people from park to park and has over 200 miles of roadways. We learned yesterday that using Fast Passes is the way to go. For those of you who do not know what these are, at select attractions you can take your park pass and get an advance tickets that tell you when to return and when you do return, they take you straight to the front of the line…Fast Passes are definitely the way to go! We did more rides and went to some of the areas we didn’t make it to yesterday and got a lot more autographs. It did end up raining for about an hour, but after that it cleared off and actually cooled it down somewhat. One disappointment was that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride was closed for renovations, but that’s OK. Again we stayed late, but took advantage of the parade times and fireworks to hit the rides as most of the people stopped to watch them and that left the lines much shorter! Again, we didn’t get back to the hotel until after 11:30pm. I feel like I’ve walked 50 miles and my feet hurt!

May 27th –

Today we went to Disney’s MGM Studios Theme Park and this summer they are having STAR WARS weekends! Kids could ‘train’ on the use of a lightsaber and even battle Darth Vader! We went and saw the Indiana Jones Stunt show and that was very entertaining, Trevor went on the Rock-n Rollercoaster and Vinny, Brittany, Trevor and I went on a ride that showed you what it would feel like to fly in a space fighter (we even flew in the trench of the Death Star!). About 5:00pm Amy started getting wore out and Trevor started complaining about being overly hot, so we talked about making it a short day and just going back to the hotel and relax, maybe swim. Hope really wanted to go back to the Magic Kingdom and ride the Buzz Lightyear ride again, so Amy, Vinny & Trev went back to the hotel and Brittany, Hope and I headed over to the Magic Kingdom on the Monorail. Vinny had lost his hat on one of the rides on Thursday and Trevor wanted a specific hat that he saw (it says: Girls Love Bad Boys and has a picture of Grumpy on the side), so I needed to go over there anyway. So, we finished up and were back at the hotel by 8:10pm or so. We never did swim, but we ordered pizza and packed for our return trip. That night we just lazed around and talked about what fun we had, what was the favorite of each and just had a great time, just us…our family…together.

May 28th –

Today was a VERY early day as we were going to be picked up at 7:15am, so we got up at 5:15am! We had decided the night before that we’d east breakfast at the airport, so we found a McDonalds and did just that. We had a two hour lay-over in Atlanta and had some lunch there. Our flight to Chicago took only 1 hour and 44 minutes and we landed somewhere around 2:20pm. Bonnie met us at the gate and our return trip was again filled with stories both from our trip and from Bonnie was well. When we left Wisconsin, it was 68 degrees but when we returned, it was 91! I was hoping to return to cooler weather…guess not.

I have just touched on some of the highlights of our trip and could go on and on for days, but we are home now and tomorrow is Amy’s surgery. All of you should know by now how much I love my wife and all of you most definitely should know by now how deep my faith is. This is no small thing that Amy’s facing. This is another pivotal moment in Amy’s treatment. Some of you have already stated that you plan on wearing purple in support, others have stated that they plan on fasting and again, others will be in prayer. No matter where you are in your beliefs, no matter where you are in your personal walk with Christ, God WILL hear your prayers. Ephesians 6:18 says; ‘And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.’ Please pray for Amy, pray frequently and pray for the surgeon(s) as well, that their sight is sharp and their hands steady. That their minds are focused and their bodies remain refreshed.

This is Amy's story as seen and told by me - V