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Day ONE: Make a wish

Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

What a day.
It started early and ended late!

Mason’s perspective when asked his favorite part of the entire day:
- Seeing Nana at the train station
- Riding the fast train
- Meeting a new friend (Jackson from Alabama)
- Getting on the BIG boat

It was a magical day to say the least but I guess I should not have thought it would have been anything else. After all we are on a Disney Cruise.

Like I mentioned earlier the day started EARLY. Mason and Kendall were up at 6am and ready to rock and roll by 6:30am.
Greg did the honors of waking Mason up and when he asked “do you know what today is” Mason simply answered in his sleepy voice “wish day”.
The morning after that was pretty smooth. Nana (my mom) picked us up and off to the train station we went where we were greeted by our wish grantors!
Mason – brought our Make-A-Wish wish grantors some roses from our garden. Of course! He is the sweetest little boy ever!

Train arrived and off we went!

Kids enjoyed the train ride. They colored in their new coloring books, we played iSpy, they looked for boats and we enjoyed a nice breakfast!

Once we arrived we were shuttled off to the boat. On our 15 minute ride we saw the good, the bad and the ugly of Vancouver. At one point Mason asked why people were laying their clothes out on the side of the street… That might give you some sort of visual.

The crazy part about going on an Alaskan cruise from Vancouver BC is you have to go through customs twice within a few hours.
-          Once when you enter Canada but then before you can take a breath – you are heading back into the United States! So let me be more clear. It only is a few hours because that is about how long you stand inline J
-          IT IS A PROCESS. Stand in this line – only to go to the next. Once we arrived to where we load the boat it only took a few hours before we could actually load the boat! I could have done without this part with two (tired) children!

WE FINALLY MAKE IT ON THE BOAT and guess what it is time for…. Our safety meeting.
We meet at muster station G (that will be easy to remember) and are briefed. Have no fears in the unlikely event of an emergency the Garka’s will know what to do!

From there it is time to head up to get ready for the departure party. I wasn't sure how either kid would manage to make it through this event (they are beyond exhausted at this point) but then something magical happened and they rallied!
Maybe it was the kids pina colada but you would have thought they had just woken up from a nap. Now that I think about it Mason did spill his after like one sip. So maybe there was just magic in the air!
The “welcome party” was everything you would expect from Disney and my kids (especially Kendall) got into and they had a blast DANCING the afternoon away! (video coming soon)

Just when they thought things were winding down – off to our room we went. Quick bath and a change of clothes and we were off again!
This time it was for our 5:45pm dinner reservation at Tritions Grill! (Seriously it felt like it was 10pm)
Food was amazing (no we did not cheat – ZERO grains for us) and the kids were happy. Once we left we were greeted by goofy and waited in line to meet Mickey – Kendall was beside herself excited until it was her turn to actually say hi – then all of a sudden our outgoing, ferrous little girl got shy. We couldn’t stop laughing. Mason – well he handled it like a champ and got cheesy for the camera. He is trained well!
Now I am back in our room – Kendall is “making an effort” to go to sleep, Greg is working out and Mason; He is at the kids lounge hanging with I am sure tons of new friends. I can’t lie. It feels weird that he is not with either Greg or I.

Since this is his wish we gave him only one rule this week – DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!


He decided to go meet new friends. We couldn't say no! I just hope he chooses to hang out with us at some point!

On another note: Internet is limited this is why no photos have been shared. It is also why this post is three days late. 
We will do what we can when we are in ports :)
Thanks for checking in.
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