The Best Laid Plans (And Other Real Life Fairy Tales)

You know it's been an interesting week when you look up and see your four year old with the thermometer in his ear taking his own temperature.

And when you are trying to reach a sweater from the very top of your closet and you put just the tiniest bit of weight on a long shelf of dresses, shoes, etc. and it comes crashing down.

Because of course every mom's dream is to care for their feverish child by night and do a massive closet cleaning by day.


All while trying to cook each meal out of remnants from your pantry and fridge because while your husband did pick up milk, bread, and eggs for you when you were housebound with your feverish son and needed him to pick up some Children's Motrin (of course you were out) you still haven't made an actual grocery run since the alternator went out, nearly two weeks ago. And the options are getting slim.


Did I mention the way the inhaler and cough syrup are making my son wound up tighter than a tick?


Or that my daughter's teacher called this morning and said she thought Madi needed to be picked up  because she didn't seem to feel well and strep throat is going around the class so a test might be nice, just in case?  Guess where I'm headed in an hour.  I've got high hopes it's just the beginnings of a cold. We'll see.


Life could be lots, lots worse.  Truthfully it hasn't necessarily even been a bad week.  Just interesting.  Not what I had planned.


You know what they say about the best laid plans.

Needless to say, my son did not get to come along on our family day with his lovable little cousin.  The plans for the whole family to go to Disney and my mom's vision of getting a picture of all three of her grandchildren in Mickey Ears by the castle didn't quite happen.

My husband stayed home with Trevor, who was still spiking a fever and coughing like a 60 year old chain smoker at that point.  The rest of us got up early and hit the Magic Kingdom.

In a torrential downpour.  Which is putting it mildly.

The thing is, we basically had to laugh or cry so we decided to laugh - well mostly, anyway!  I'll tell you this - we parked in the second row.  No tram necessary.  No line for the monorail.  No line for anything really, except to meet the fairies which we finally got to do!!  We probably got to do at least triple of what we would have done on sunny, busy day.

We just got drenched beyond your imagination, even in those ponchos you pay $7.50 apiece for.

However, dreams can come true when you decided to stick Disney out in high winds and sideways rain. My daughter got to meet (drumroll)...

Rapunzel from Tangled!

You can see how wet our clothes and hair were.  And that was just the beginning.  We hadn't even been at the parks for an hour, and the rain got substantially worse.  But...no lines for the latest Disney favorite!!  How magical is that?

Another advantage of going in the rain was that a mere few minutes before the parade started we got curbside spots on Main Street - and at this point the rain had pretty much stopped.  My nephew was captivated by the whole entire parade, especially when Mickey walked by! 

And we all got tears in our eyes when he got to actually meet Mickey.  There is something truly special when a child meets The Mouse for the first time.  It really does feel magical.

In the end we went home completely drenched but also with an umbrella full of memories.  We were sad Trev didn't get to join the fun, and probably would have opted for less wet and more sun, but loved the sparse crowd and miniscule lines we got in return. 


 So remember, when the best laid plans don't work out, you can still make the most of things and maybe even make a little magic!  Real life fairy tales aren't perfect and definitely not scripted, but can still be lots of fun.  :)