The Gift

Ladies and Gentlemen, girls and boys welcome to the Disney Wonder cruise ship . . .

Ahh, yes. It is fact. We went on a cruise and it was all smiles, thus I'll record our fun :-). Starting way back from the beginning which was probably five years ago when I first started some gentle nudges towards this type of vacation. Our friends from college, Brad and Camille, were the first to tell me about the great "Disney cruise vacation" and that was awhile ago. This has been a l-o-n-g time coming. :-)

Before Christmas, Darren agreed to the vacation and I excitedly planned ways to give it to the kids. He adamantly said, "No, this one is for you. I am giving it to you." A few days before Christmas, the boys from this household spent quite a bit of time at Darren's office working on gifts.  This is what he came up with, isn't he sweet?

When I opened the voucher on Christmas morning, I exclaimed and oohed and ahhed, then started naming off familiar friends' names that I could take on the cruise as one of my four guests :-)  The kids looked at me in disbelief, then said, "What about us?"

Then I changed my mind and invited them to be my guests. :-) We excitedly talked of the cruise for the next month and a half. The kids had no cruise baseline whatsoever (I can't think of how a non-therapist would say what I am trying to say which is that my kids haven't ever considered or known anything about a cruise). One day, when we showed the girls  pictures from the internet of our boat and various activities, our daughter declared, "You are freaking my mind out".

The weekend before the cruise, we all headed to the salon to get our nails done (another awesome gift given the girls and me for Christmas included a mani/pedi at a local place). I've never done something like this with my girls and they were just pure joy to behold. From the first drop of water that hit their bare feet, they were wide-eyed and loving every second of pampering (watch out boys).

Our oldest emphatically declared she had chosen her career in life - to work in a nail salon. She thought this was simply the greatest occasion. Ironically, she didn't choose to have her fingernails painted because she has a tendency to pick at nails and be "bugged" by the polish after painting. I was impressed with her self control. That is, until she watched her little sister and me get our nails painted. She decided she would just have to paint her nails at home because our nails looked so very cool.

Cue the disaster button, for when we arrived home with beautifully painted toenails and fingernails, she disappeared for twenty minutes to begin her career of being a nail painter. Tearfully, she returned to my presence with two hands that looked, no joke here, like she belonged in a horror movie. She had chosen bright red fingernail polish and had made such a mess of her fingernails. Crying real tears, she said, "I can't ever be a good nail painter."

Bright red nail polish doesn't come off very easily so it took a few days of looking like she had been dipping her hands in blood before it all came off. Poor girl, having to refocus her career goals at such a young age . . .