Let me start of a week or so before. As soon as we were 10 days out from our big surprise, I watched the weather religiously for Anaheim. The closer we got, the better it was looking for great weather! I kept telling R " You HAVE to wear a jacket, you can't get sick!" and other motherly advise. We were down to a week, all things a go. Everything looked perfect! Then the Monday, 2 days before our flight would leave guess who got sick. R got some monster of a bug. She couldn't keep ANYTHING down. Solids, liquids, frozen, it didn't matter. Poor thing had a fever and no energy on top it all.
I was very optimistic and thought, "I'm glad she got it now, she is typically sick for 24 hours and is fine". Well, the 24 hours came and went and guess who was still sick. Its now Tuesday and not looking good. We fly out the next day at 4pm. Ugg! I was so upset, bugged, disappointed, and every other negative emotion. That night Jared and my dad gave her a blessing of strength and health.
The next morning, the big day. R was still crying because her stomach hurt, but no throwing up. No fever, but still no energy. I now figured that her stomach hurt because she was so hungry. I tried to get her to eat, but she cried "I'll just throw it up!". I had the whole event of the BIG SURPRISE planned out in my head a month before, and she wasn't cooperating very well. We were to fly out in a few hours. I wasn't even showered or packed, because I spent the last 3 days dealing with a sick kid. So finally we had to tell her something that would motivate her to eat. So we gave in and told her that we were going on a trip that day with her cousin Kayla, and we would need to go on an airplane, so she needed to eat! That was enough. She slowly began to eat. A little bit of smoothie first, and then half of a toast. We even got her in the tub for a quick bath. The energy was slowly coming back.
I ran downstairs to "pack her suitcase" the way I wanted to surprise her. My mom had bought 2 Mickey Mouse balloons and I had a few new Disney shirts, and activities. I arranged it just right, and brought it upstairs and covered it all with a blanket. We brought R in and we told her there were clues under the blanket of where we were going. I had to cut the video, so it isn't the whole thing, but you get the idea!
It was so sweet, she had teary eyes when she came over to me, but she would NOT believe us! We had spoken many times the weeks leading up to this. Some of my friends had just got back from Disneyland, and she would look at the pictures with me. She would ask "When are we going to Disneyland?" I would reply "I don't know, its A LOT of money!"
We picked my my 2 nephews and my mom picked up my sister, my niece, and my sister's niece(who is pretty much like R's cousin). And we headed off to the airport.
With "barf bags" in tow, we made it to the airport. At this point we had her 70% convinced.
It wasn't until we got to our hotel that we had her 95% convinced. I guess we tease her too much.
It was a miracle that she was able to feel well enough to travel AND enjoy herself!
Lots and lots of pictures to come. I will most likely break the trip up by days! YAY!!!
