Charlie's Make A Wish Trip

This post is a long time and coming. Life has been pretty busy since Charlie's MAW trip and I am finally getting around to doing a blog post. 

 For Charlie's Make a Wish (MAW) Charlie Chose to go on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas. 

We went right after Thanksgiving in 2015. If you don't know why Charlie was able to have a MAW gift he had a Kidney Transplant when he was 2 1/2 years old.

To start the trip MAW got us a one night stay at water park of america the night before our kids first plane ride. We stayed there and had an early morning limo ride to the airport also a first for the kids.

We flew to FL and the kids did great on their first plane ride. We had a one night stay in Orlando and stayed in a hotel attached to the airport and met up with a shuttle bus the next morning. We are finally almost to the cruise ship and the kids are so exited! Its really our first family trip and I think the kids thought it was magical. 

We were on the Disney dream cruise ship if I remember correctly its the biggest of their ships.

once we were on the ship we had some time before we could go to our room so we did some exploring. 

Charlie

Natalie 

 Willa

Jeff and I (Sarah)

We had about 2 hours of exploring before we went to our room. We found the pools,  movie theater, play stage, the dance clubs, the restaurants, the kids area. There was so much to explore the kids were squealing left and right with excitement. We even found Micky. 

Charlie was a little scared of Micky but he didn't stop talking about him the whole trip. and every time was just as exciting. 

Every night we were assigned a time and place to eat dinner and the first night I think we were at the animation studio for dinner.

 It was a really cool place we ate dinner with characters from Nemo, after dinner we went to a play called Villain's.

Waiting for the play

 It had a bunch of Disney villains in the play and the kids loved it. To make it more awesome there was a storm outside and the whole ship was rocking back and forth. We made it through without getting sick. There was so much fun and excitement The first day. 

Day 2 our first day on the ship. We started by having breakfast buffet style and realized that it really wasn't the best idea with little kids so it was the only time we did that for breakfast. 

 our room had a balcony. 

After Breakfast The kids wanted to go swimming. Instead of getting off on the island we stopped at so we spent the day swimming (I didn't get pictures sorry). When we were done swimming we came back to our room for a rest and Jeff and Natalie decided to get off the ship and go see the island for a little while. They were not gone for long but they came back with 2 necklaces. 

That night for dinner we ate at a different restaurant. The enchanted Garden

We didn't go to the play the 2nd night, the kids were just to tired. 

Day 3

Disney's Island Castaway cay

We woke up got ready for the day and had breakfast then got ready for the kids first ever Ocean beach day!

I'm pretty sure it was the kids favorite to swim in the ocean. To top off the super awesome day it was pirate night on the ship so everyone got dressed up for dinner. 

Charlie fell asleep at dinner and slept for the rest of the night. So I stayed in the room with Charlie and Willa while Jeff and Natalie went to the movie the good Dinosaur then the went to the top deck for the pirate party and fireworks. I was sleeping by the time they got back. 

Day 4

At sea

We were pretty tired after the fun filled week so after breakfast we spent the day at the pool and exploring the ship some more. 

Charlie was invited to a special Make a wish party where he and Jeff got to meet and hang out with Micky and color pictures and have cookies with the other make a wish kids on the ship. 

The kids also went to a Jake and the never land pirate and Sofia the first dance party.

Natalie and Willa loved it. Charlie thought it was more fun to jump around the furniture.

The last night a storm was rolling in and we got a few cool pictures. 

and our last dinner was at Cinderella's palace

The last night we packed up all our stuff and had in in the hall so in the morning all we had to do was eat breakfast and get off the ship and make our journey home, The sea was pretty rough from the storm and Charlie got sick after that we were really ready to head back home... It was a trip of a life time and we hope we can do it again one day when all the kids are out of diapers. 

The End of an Era

We are moving!
We have finally finished fixing up our house and put it on the market. I thought I would do a little recap of our 320 Bluejay Ave, house.
 We have done so much work to our house I'm going to try and find some before pictures to go with the finished house. I hope you enjoy (this might be a little picture heavy).

We will start in the living room. 

Before

These 2 pictures are of the front door and the stairs. Very dark and closed off.

We removed most of the wall in these to pictures.

Good bye 70s wood paneling. 

It was so dark in the sitting area even with the big picture window.

These are all before pictures and here are some after pictures

All those walls in the first few pictures are now gone

No more wood paneling 

you can see the wall that is gone now.

Its so much more open. 

Now we are going to go into the kitchen.
First some before pictures then some after pictures.
The kitchen changed quite a bit. We raised the ceilings. Replaced the windows, put in a lot more lights, and opened it up. 

 The sink was on the other side of the kitchen then the dishwasher. It flows so much better now.

Next we are going to do the laundry room / new bathroom

We added a bathroom and got front loader washer and dryers to save on space

 This bathroom is where the dryer was in the before picture

Its not a true before picture of the dining room as the wall in the living room is already missing but that's some good remodeling mess :)  

I like the afters on all these pictures better then the before pictures.

The office / Charlie's room

This is one if my favorite rooms and non of the pictures do it justice. 

we moved the closet, replaced the window and added 2 windows. We also raised the ceiling quite a bit. I also like the room better as an office probably why  I don't think the pictures do the room justice. 

Both pictures are taken from the same spot.  We removed the closet from the east wall and added it to the wall adjacent to the laundry room.

Up stairs bathroom

The bathroom feels so much cleaner and brighter then it did before we re-did it. 

 Before and after. 

Our bedrooms. I don't really have before pictures. The before of our rooms in my and Jeff's room had no closet doors, white walls and pink carpet. The girls room had white walls brown trim and no carpet. 

Jeff and my room.
The first picture is of our headboard that came after the pictures of our house  

Here is a look at the outside of our house.

 I don't have any from before we started painting the brown. I put in the walkway and plants. You had to walk through the gate to get to our front door and there was a tree blocking the picture window.  We also had cement steps for the front entrance of the house.

Not very pretty

Scraping the paint off. 

Elaina and Danny helping scrape the paint off.

 One no longer has to walk through a gate to get to our front door.
New tree to the side of the house so we can see out the picture window.

New and improved walk way with sitting area under the big maple. Jeff and his dad also made new front steps.

 the original fire pit

The corner garden when I had just made it.

I hope you enjoyed the before and after of our house. We put so much time and energy into our very long slow flip of our house. We are so excited to be moving to a bigger house in July and we hope the new owners of our house love it.
Next post will be of our new house!