Noah's Wish: Travel to Florida

Noah enjoying a movie during
the drive to Florida

We arrived in Florida this evening and I type this from the bar in our adorable little villa.....

Let me back up though. We opted to drive to Florida versus flying because we felt like we could control much more - no delays, no noisy children on flights that might upset Noah, etc. Because it is about an eight hour drive, we decided it would be best to break it up into two days.  We left on Wednesday afternoon, literally the minute he got off the school bus. Make a Wish rented us a mini van to travel in, which J and I had picked up earlier in the day, and we had it loaded and ready to go and were literally sitting around waiting on the school bus to bring Noah home like two children on Christmas morning.

We took him straight from the school bus to the mini van and told him we were going to go on an adventure. Honestly, he looked pretty confused as he looked around the mini van, saw his pillows, our luggage, and pointed to our truck asking why we weren't going in our truck. The rental mini van had a pull down DVD player in the back seat, we already had Dolphin Tale (one of Noah's favorite movies that he's only watched 648 times) loaded up and ready to go so we turned the DVD player on and watched his eyes get big as one of his favorite movies began.

Driving in a car with Noah for an extended period of time is usually pretty rough. He gets fussy after a little bit and just tends to fuss or yell a lot and there's really not a lot you can do to soothe him. But this time, things have been completely different so far. He has sat in the back seat by himself, distracted by the DVD player, watching movies and even fell asleep for a little bit.

If you read my post the other day, you know that my parents are accompanying us on this adventure. They left a couple of hours before us to go to my brother's house to drop their dog off. We met up with them at a McDonald's off the interstate in the middle of no where. Noah had no idea that they were coming a long and the look of surprise on his face when my Dad walked up to our mini van was priceless.

Noah riding the carousel

We ended up making it all the way to Jacksonville and spent the night there. Then this morning, we made our way to the Give Kids the World Resort a few hours away. This place is pretty cool! The staff is so nice and they really put the kids first in the layout and design of the villas as well as the entire resort. So far, my favorite thing (and probably Noah's too) here is the carousel. Noah has always loved carousels - so much so that he had a carousel themed birthday party one year when he was young - and even at his age now, he still loves carousels. The carousel here has two different spots - the turtle is pictured - that a wheelchair can just be pushed up into. You then just lock the wheelchair into the turtle and he's good to go. So much easier than putting him on a horse and having someone stand behind him with their hand on his back to give him that little bit of extra support that he needs.

We finished off the day by visiting Santa and having Christmas Dinner at Town Hall at Give Kids the World since every Thursday is Christmas here.

Tomorrow - it's Disney time! He still doesn't know!