Day 8 Christmas Countdown 2022
While I have a nice list of memories and ideas sitting at my elbow, this one sprang up this morning and it’s short, sweet and funny. To me anyway.
Our four little grands are currently fulfilling the dream of their parents and spending a week at Disney all done up for Christmas.
Their mommy and daddy loved Disney as children and to go at Christmas has been on their young life bucket list, so we are enjoying the daily drop of pictures and videos and you know how joy sometimes wells up so big, it makes you cry?
That is how I feel when I see Caroline waving frantically at Mickey Mouse or squirting her brothers with water on some ride.
All the photos prompted Russ to dig out something I totally forgot about.
Back before Shutterfly or Walgreens could make those nice photo books, I managed to put together a photo album of our own trip to Disney and Russ knew where it was.
(Remind me to ask him about some other things I have been looking for lately. Maybe he has a bead on those as well…)
Anywho…I digress and here is the story for today.
In October of 1995, we packed up our young family, cashed in their college savings and headed to Orlando.
I remember paying for our tickets, which I believe were paper…yes, yes they were…and having to just stop a minute and breathe deeply a few times. I was bound and determined we would see everything possible and some things twice to get our money’s worth.
Well, we did and then some.
It was a wonderful vacation.
Back in those days we took pictures on things called a camera. These cameras had rolls of film. Young people may have to look that up to understand.
We would take these rolls of film in their little canisters to a business that developed them into printed photos. Remember again, this trip happened in October.
I had also promised Sarah that instead of paying big bucks for one of those expensive costumes, I would make anything for her as a Halloween costume when we got home. She selected a Ninja pattern that was quite detailed so I spent the rest of October making that.
We sped through November and I was doing ten million things and realized we needed a photo for our Christmas Card, I remembered vaguely taking one of the kids that would be perfect for our card.
I went through all the packages of developed prints that were in a drawer waiting til I had more time. Sadly, not one was really very good of all three together.
Again for the digital aged/phone snapping generation – you didn’t know what the photos would look like until weeks later. It was archaic and hard times for parents.
As I regretted that I didn’t even take one really good picture of them somewhere in that park, I found the only picture that was fairly good of all three and it included some Disney employee/actor type guy who took a liking to our crew in Epcot.
While we were visiting the Morocco exhibit after the sun had set, he came dancing up to us and took Rachel by the hand. He led our three like the pied piper through the lantern lit streets of this movie set village with Russ and I laughing and trying to keep up so we didn’t lose our offspring down some alley.
I snapped this picture and since it was good of all three, I just sent it with our cards. One gentleman at church (and I use the term loosely) forever commented about our fourth child that no one knew about. Rodney Fleener, I am looking at you.
As we moved through Christmas, I took more pictures (of course) and accumulated more canisters of film so after the holidays I took them in to be developed and imagine my surprise in January when I picked up our photos and found this….
Sigh. I had apparently taken it near the end of the trip and it was still in the camera when we got home. As I took more photos, I just piled the canisters up til after the holidays.
The perfect Disney photo I actually DID take…but forgot about.
Also I am reminded as our daughter and son-in-law have shared battles over t-shirts with their boys, that Rachel was attached to this shirt and managed to wear several times…what goes around comes around ….heehee…
Isn’t that the holidays though? Full of good intentions and missed opportunities yet it’s really okay. Nothing is going to be perfect except the Child we celebrate so just do your best and laugh at the gaffs which invariably happen.
Bless you as you do your best.
You are loved <3