Arriving at the Village!

When we arrived at the airport in Florida, there was a greeter waiting for us with a sign that said, "Welcome Bryce Clayton". The greeter helped us get our luggage and get over to the rental car area. I was a little nervous when they showed us the car we would have. It was a minivan. Now, I used to drive a minivan, but getting a non-folding wheelchair and all of our luggage into that van seemed like an impossible task. However, with a little effort, we did manage to get it all in. The boys only complained a little bit about being smashed by suitcases on the way to the Village!

Give Kids the World Village is where we stayed for the week. It is a place that is used just by wish kids and their families. By the time we got to the village, it was dark. These next few pictures are actually pictures that we got on a disk from GKTW village. This is what we saw when we arrived...only lighter. =) It was such an exciting moment to realize that we were actually here!


This is the House of Hearts, the first building that you come to once you are on the property. We had been told that when we arrived, the whole family was suppose to go in to check-in. We soon found out why.


Here is the check-in desk


When we entered, they had us all sit together at one of the tables in this lobby. They gave Bryce a big stuffed Micky Mouse and each of the other kids a small stuffed animal and told us a little bit about the village. Then they gave us our keys to our villa and our food cards and lots of little extras for Bryce and the other kids.


The back of the House of Hearts


This is the actual picture that I took as we arrived at the village.


On the ground in front of the House of Hearts is this Welcome. The kids all thought it was pretty neat.


After checking in, one of the volunteers took us to our villa and took these pictures for us.




When we went into our villa, we saw that our fridge had been filled with sodas, water, and little snacks. There was also a bag of treats on the table. I have pictures of the inside of our villa, but I forgot to put them in this post. I'll do it in a latter one, but for now I will just tell you that it magnificent and had everything there that we would need for the week!

We were all very excited to be there. We first went down to have dinner and then I attended the orientation meeting while John and the kids finished dinner and went to check out the ice cream parlor. Don't worry, as soon as the meeting was over I headed straight there and joined them in having some ice-cream. At the orientation meeting I received our packet for the week. It had all kinds of goodies in there including our tickets for the parks, a badge for Bryce that got us free parking at the parks, plus lots of other goodies. We received a 3 day park hopper pass to the Disney Parks, a one day pass for Sea World, and a 2 day park hopper pass for Universal Studios. Well, if you count the days, you will see that we already had more days of activities available to us then the number of days we would be there. And that didn't even include all there is to do at the village! There was no way we would get to everything, but we sure had fun trying! Don't worry, I have pictures of all of it that I will be posting here soon!