A Disney Dream Come True

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a huge Disney fan. I spent my entire childhood watching Disney movies, and Disney World has always been the most magical place in the world to me, even as an adult. I’ve always talked about how I can’t wait to share my love for Disney with my children. Well, one of my dreams came true before Christmas when we got to take Kinsie to Disney World.

Ryan, Kinsie and I flew out to Orlando the week before Christmas and met my parents, my sister and her family. This was the second time Kinsie has been on a plane, and it was much different than the last time! Before she was only 8 months old and she pretty much slept the whole time. This time, she was happy, but crazy! She switched back and forth from my lap to Ryan’s about a hundred times, and made friends with everyone around her. It was a long flight trying to wrestle with a 1 year old, but luckily between the two of us, we were able to handle it.

We started our Disney adventure by going to Animal Kingdom. I knew Kinsie would love it because of how much she loves animals. We went on a safari and saw lots of animals, went to a petting zoo, and met lots of characters, including Mickey and Minnie! Kinsie LOVED meeting the characters. As you’ll see in the pictures, she was completely intrigued by them. She liked touching their faces and holding their hands. Kinsie also had a great time with her cousins. Briggs knows how much Kinsie loves animals, so every time we’d see an animal, he’d say, “Do you see that animal, Baby Kinsie?” The last thing we did that day was meet Mickey and Minnie. It was really important to me that she got to meet them. It is such a special experience that I wanted to share with my daughter. The look in the kids’ eyes when they met them made the entire trip worth it. It was an awesome day at Animal Kingdom!

The next day, we went to the Magic Kingdom. As soon as we entered the park, Kinsie was fascinated by the Christmas lights, balloons, and Cinderella’s Castle. She was hooked immediately…that’s my girl! We took her on a few rides right away, including the Dumbo ride and “It’s a Small World.” The girl had her serious face on the whole time…which, in Kinsie language, means that she is completely amazed! Throughout the day we went on many other rides and saw lots of shows. She loved it all! One of her favorites was the Enchanted Tiki Room, where she danced and sang along with the birds. She also loved Mickey’s Philharmagic, which is a 3D show. She wore a pair of the 3D glasses and was reaching out for the flying 3D objects during the show! During the day there was a parade, which was awesome! The kids loved waving to the characters and dancing to all the music. I have never once been disappointed with a Disney parade. It is always magical to all of us!

Kinsie’s look of amazement on the rides

Having fun at the parade

Later in the evening was Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. You had to buy extra tickets in order to stay for this, which we all decided was definitely something we wanted to do. We had to save a good spot for the parade a few hours ahead of time, which made it hard to keep the attention of a wild child like Kinsie for that long, but the parade was AMAZING, so it was worth it. This was one of the best Disney parades that I’ve seen, and we sat right on Main Street, where they had fake snow falling from the top of the buildings throughout the night. That was one of Kinsie’s favorite parts. In between every float in the parade, she’d point to the snow to make sure we saw it. I guess one of us will be happy later in the winter when it starts snowing! After the parade, we got to have a Dance Party with the Country Bears. This was a combination of two of Kinsie’s favorite things…bears and music, so it’s obvious that she had a great time! Finally, we saw a fireworks show. This was no ordinary fireworks show, these were the most incredible fireworks that we’d ever seen. This was also the first time that Kinsie got to see fireworks because we weren’t able to keep her up late enough in July. I thought she might be bothered by the loudness, but she wasn’t. She absolutely loved them! She kept pointing and saying “ooo, ahhh” (which is also what she says whenever she sees a Christmas tree.) We were so glad that Kinsie was able to stay up late enough to see the fireworks, but it definitely set the bar high for any future fireworks shows she’ll see!

Amazed by the Christmas parade

Dance Party with the Country Bears

Loving the fireworks show

After the fireworks, it was already after 10pm, and we could tell Kinsie was exhausted, so we tried to get her to fall asleep in the stroller. She was not having it…she just wanted to party! She flailed her arms and legs around, kept kicking off her blankets and laughing. I guess all the events of the day gave her an adrenaline rush because she was wired! We started leaving the park around 11:00 and she finally fell asleep, but only for a few minutes. She sang and danced the whole drive back to the hotel then finally crashed when we got back.

Several things made this trip to Disney World very special to us. First of all, this was the first time we brought Kinsie, Briggs and Kerigan and it was so special getting to share our love for Disney with our children and seeing the looks on their faces as they experienced the magic of Disney World. My heart was full the entire time getting to be in the most magical place on Earth with the people that I love. The other part that made this trip so special was that Diane, Ryan Robinson’s mom, had planned it for us before she passed away in August. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’d know that Diane was suddenly taken from us which shattered our world. Diane was supposed to go on this trip with us, which in a way, she was…just not in the way that we expected. We all felt Diane’s spirit with us during the trip and we know she was smiling down on us from heaven.

Thank you, Diane, for such a special and magical trip. We all miss you.

Diane’s Dancing Again

When life gets too hard to stand…kneel.

About two weeks ago, on August 3, our lives were abruptly changed when we lost someone very special to us. My brother-in-law Ryan’s mom passed away pretty unexpectedly. Diane Robinson was an amazing, beautiful, compassionate woman who impacted so many lives. She had Multiple Sclerosis and therefore had been wheelchair bound for many years, but the strength of her heart exceedingly made up for the lack of her physical strength.

I knew Diane for 10 years. From the first time I met her, I could tell how genuine of a woman she was. My sister, Krista dated Ryan for about 5 years before they got married, and even before we officially became family, Diane embraced us entirely. She and her husband Don never missed a single event, milestone, and get-together that I can think of in the decade that I’ve known them. No matter the occasion, Diane was always there with a smile on her face. She was not only a loving mother to her three boys, Scott, Ryan and Lance, but she was a mother in one way or another to everyone she knew. As a teacher in the Danville schools for 28 years, she made a difference in so many students’ and community members’ lives. Diane had a unique and individual relationship with everyone she knew. Whenever she had a conversation with someone, she genuinely cared about what they had to say. She always asked me how Ryan was doing in med school, and what book I was currently reading (we had a shared love for reading), and how much she loved seeing Briggs, Kinsie and Kerigan grow up together. She loved this blog, and always told me how much she enjoyed following our lives and the adventures we went on with Kinsie. She always bought Ryan, Kinsie and I gifts for Christmas…even if they were ridiculous things like flat bill hats and umbrellas. She just wanted to show us that she cared about us. I was also lucky enough to get to be in a fantasy football league with her for the past 4 years. She always came to the draft prepared with the names of her favorite players and would do anything to get those players, even if it meant spending all of her draft money on them and having no money left for the rest of her roster. Diane was one of a kind and never failed to make you feel loved just by being in her presence. I was beyond blessed to get to call her my family.

Briggs and Kerigan adored their Nana

So where do we go from here? How do we handle going through something so heartbreaking to us? I am still trying to swallow these questions myself. When someone passes away, many people ask, “Why them?” or “why were they taken from us?” These are questions that we will never fully be able to answer until it won’t matter anymore. The only way to get through things like this is to think of the bigger picture. We can’t just think of this life that we are currently living, but the one that comes after we leave this Earth. We may have lost Diane here in this life, but she has started her eternal life and is dancing with Jesus now. She’s no longer held back by her physical circumstances. She’s free of any pain, hurt or discomfort that she felt while she was here. She’s free. We are going to miss her every single day for the remainder of our time here, but that gives us even more of a reason to live like Jesus every day…so we can someday see people that we love again. So we can someday be free of pain and suffering. And most importantly, so we can spend eternity with our Lord and Savior. Diane may not have walked for the last 20+ years of her life, but she was one of the best examples I knew of what it looked like to walk like Jesus.

We love and miss you, Diane. Save us a dance in heaven.