Disney surprise Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

The Final Disney Reveal

Ring Pops–just another way to kick off a great adventure!

I almost didn’t dare to show my punk-face at church today after leaving the Disney series without a promised resolution. God-fearing Christians can forgive a lot of things, but you’d better not start a story about your kids and not finish it or there might be words.

Sure enough, I stepped in the door with my Bible in my hand and was accosted with mean words like, “So, when are you going to post the rest of the story?”

I see how it is. It’s all love, joy, and peace until your blog post is late by a day or three.

But I have to take responsibility for causing people to stumble because I did promise to tell–no, show–what happened when my kids finally figured out where their amazing surprise was going to take them. I was going to post a video so you could see their delighted faces for yourselves.

The only trouble was, I had no idea how to do that. The video I took was too long so I couldn’t use it without editing it down. Not only that, but it turns out I have am a terrible cinematographer. Probably I didn’t need to take so many shots of the tops of my children’s heads or the ceiling of the fifth floor of the Sea-Tac parking garage.

Also, I sound funny on film.

Worse than that, I’m totally inept when it comes to technology. I don’t even have a cell phone, and I’ve never sent a text message in my life. I’m pretty sure that means I’m Amish.

So, I promised a video grand-finale to my series but had absolutely no way of making good on that promise. I was banking on the fact that my husband, who sports a really cool prepaid cell phone from Walmart and just yesterday received a text message from a very nice company offering him a great price on auto insurance, could figure it out.

I was wrong.

For some reason, his video editing software did not like my shots of the Sea-Tac parking garage ceiling any more than I did, and it refused to work with that kind of lame material. He spent a good chunk of time on Friday trying to help me out, but it could not be done.

Meanwhile, the three older kids came bursting home a little after midnight, all sun-kissed from spending four days in a state that exports all their cloud cover to Washington. They were all “Disney-this” and “Disney-that” and “Why can’t we watch Aladdin?”

Because we’re Amish, that’s why.

Saturday was a work day at our house, but in between refinishing my cabinets and hearing all about the princesses that infest the Happiest Place on Earth, I managed to do something amazingly techie. See, there’s this new thing called YouTube. I hear it’s all the rage with kids these days. You can upload and edit your own home videos for all the world to see. And that is exactly what I did.

I was able to upload my video on YouTube, even though it took nearly two hours to do it and I was half afraid something would go wrong and I’d have to start all over. But it worked! I even managed to edit it down just a bit so it’s not eternally long and you don’t have to listen to my funny voice until you start to wonder how Jeff puts up with it.

The end result was this, a video of the final moments of the mystery adventure. As I told you in the last post, I had created gift bags for the kids that I had planned to have them open on the plane. But because they still hadn’t figured out where they were going even after we pulled into the airport and I gave them Mickey shirts to wear, I had to give them the gift bags in the hopes that the final clues would help them make the connection between all these clues and Disneyland!

You can see all the things that were in the bag here.

Meanwhile, the kids started unpacking their gift bags. Somewhere between the Buzz Lightyear puzzle and the autograph books, it started to sink in.

This is what happened:

Disney Surprises

Yesterday, I told you the beginning of our Disney surprise for the three oldest children. They had already received their first clue at home and were on their way to the second, but they had no idea where they were headed.

The prevailing assumption was that we were going to a movie theater to watch a Disney film, perhaps even Peter Pan.

But then we pulled up to Nana’s house.

“Get out of the car!” I sang. I had been singing Disney songs the entire way but the kids weren’t particularly interested in my vocal acrobatics or my touching rendition of “Part of Your World.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were blocking me out. “Get out of the car!” I sang again.

The kids stared at me. “Get out of the car?” Faith repeated. She sounded a little worried that we might have arrived at our destination, and while Nana’s house is great, it certainly didn’t blow her mind like Daddy promised.

“Aren’t we going to be late for the movie?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t know, but if you don’t hop out, you won’t get your next clue,” I teased.

The van emptied immediately. Children ran into Nana’s house and children squealed when they saw Nana and children read Nana the first clue and told her all about the fun they’d already had. Nana told all the children to calm down because she had to go to the bathroom.

But really, she was bringing me her suitcase to load up into the back of the van with the others. Oh, the trickery!

After the suitcase was stashed, we lined the kids up on her couch. I gave them each a wrapped package with a little note that read:

Bibbidi bobbidi boo!

There’s an adventure waiting for you!

You’ll need a bit of faith,

A lot of trust,

And don’t forget your pixie dust!

(Have you ever Googled “bibbidi bobbidi boo?” I have.)

Moving right along.

The kids opened their boxes.

Each child had a little pixie dust necklace.

“Pixie dust! Can we eat it?” asked the child who did not care about being able to fly. He’s going to regret that when Captain Hook gets ahold of him.

But, in point of fact, he could eat the pixie dust.

After looking high and low and trying all sorts of things to create little vials for pixie dust (including taking apart little light bulbs so I could use the glass containers, which totally didn’t work) I found these little plastic containers in the bead section of my local craft store. They cost $0.49 each. Score!

Plus, they came with a plastic lid that already had a hole in the top for stringing ribbon. Yeah me!

I created the pixie dust by mixing a bit of sugar with just a drop of liquid food coloring. I created several colors, then baked them in the over at 350 for 10-15 minutes, just until the sugar was no longer damp. I layered the sugar into the vials, added pretty ribbons and beads, a few stickers, and of course, Tinkerbells.

I thought this might be a dead-giveaway for the surprise, but I was wrong.

With the video camera rolling, I prodded. “So, you have pixie dust. What do you need pixie dust for?”

“Flying!”

“Yes, flying! So, where do you think you’re going?”

“Neverland!”

Face palm.

“Get in the car.”

These children would make terrible detectives

Nana hopped in the car too and we all headed off to the airport, although the kids didn’t know that. The airport is all the way through Seattle for us, and I wondered how long it would take the kids to figure it out. So far, their powers of deduction left a lot to be desired.

But, they were about to find another clue.

Kya happened to peek in the back of the van. “There are suitcases back there!” she yelled.

Rats.

“Suitcases? We are going to Beachwood!” Jonathan shouted. “I knew it! I thought of that! I thought of Beachwood!”

“Jonathan, Beachwood is in the other direction,” Nana noted.

“Then we’re going to Whistler! I knew it!”

“Whistler is in the other direction.”

“What’s south?” I hinted.

Silence.

“Nothing,” Faith said.

I’m sure she meant no offense to Oregon and California.

We zipped right past Providence Classical Christian School, where Jeff used to work, so that meant we weren’t picking up Kiri and Moira for a movie date. We zipped right past the Space Needle,

and said many laudatory things about the glories of Mt. Rainier on that particular day.

Too bad the children were not particularly interested in the view. They were languishing in the backseat. Ahahahaha….this adventure is taking forever. Weeping and gnashing of teeth and are we there yet?

I decided to send them to Argentina. So I took the exit to the airport.

“Are we getting off the freeway?” Faith asked. “Are we going to the airport?”

Perhaps…

The exit to the airport curved around and put us on another freeway for a second.

“Aw man, another freeway!”

But wait…

“It is the airport! We’re going to the airport! Are we getting Grandma?”

Never mind the fact that my house was in a crafting state of despair and there was no way I’d let Grandma come over with it looking like that no matter how much I’d like to see her, I let the kids ponder that possibility.

I zipped my little blue van-that-does-not-indicate-I’m-a-soccer-mom right under a glaring DEPARTURES sign, but no one read it.

I zipped my little blue van-that-does-not-indicate-I’m-a-soccer-mom right past the loading zones just to tease the children and not because I misread the signs that led to parking.

“Why are we at the airport? Why are we at the airport? Why are we at the airport with pixie dust and a bunch of clues about Disney?”

I don’t know, kids. Why are you?

We parked.

“Okay,” I said. “Time for another clue!” We tumbled out of the car and I opened the back of the van, which was stuffed with suit cases and three bags loaded with Disney-themed treats. I handed each of them another wrapped package and started rolling the video again because surely, surely they were going to get it now.

Wrapping paper flew into the air and each child got one of these:

Personalized reverse tie-dye Disney shirts for Kya, Faith, and Jonathan

“Huh. Mickey Mouse shirts. Thanks, Mom.”

Face palm.

“Put them on,” I commanded while pondering the fact that this generation of uneducated children has no idea that Mickey Mouse is Disney. This generation of children knows nothing of The MOUSE!

It’s a shame.

“They just don’t get it,” Nana said, shaking her head. She was taking it hard.

“So. Let’s review,” I said, holding on to the last fragment of hope that my children could put the pieces together. “What do we know about Mickey?”

“He’s a mouse?”

“He has a clubhouse?”

“He’s from Disney!” Kya came in for the save.

“Yes! Disney! So. We are at the airport with pixie dust necklaces and Mickey Mouse shirts…where do you think we’re going?”

The video was rolling, waiting to capture this precious moment for all posterity.

But.

They didn’t get it.

Face palm

It’s Disney, people! Disney!

I wanted to shout it but I didn’t. “Okay, pause,” I said, putting the video camera away. This was going to take a little more work than I thought.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another edition of, “How long will it take these kids to figure out they’re going to DISNEY?”

(Also, I’ll have a t-shirt tutorial up later this week so you can make your own reverse tie-dye mouse shirts in case you want to test your child’s deductive powers by surprising him or her with a trip to Disney).

A Disney Adventure

Yesterday was D-Day.

It was the day my three older children were going to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. The best part was, they had no idea where they were going.

If you read Friday’s post, you know all about it, and you probably know that keeping something like that a secret was quite the trick, especially since I announced it to thousands of my closest friends on the internet first, including everyone we hung out with at church on Sunday.

But it worked!

The kids woke up giddy and clueless. Throughout the morning, as they languished over their schoolwork, they threw ideas back and forth like popcorn.

Maybe we were going hiking! Or camping! But wait–I hadn’t asked anyone to pack, so we couldn’t be going far.

No one had noticed the three neat piles of clothes on the table in my room, and no one had thought twice when Nana brought two extra suitcases over “because she was cleaning out,” and no one saw me lug three suitcases into the back of the van while Jeff suddenly decided to show the kids the pictures Jonathan took with his camera. Nope. No one had seen any of that.

So of course, we couldn’t be going anywhere overnight! Too bad, because that would have been fun.

Meanwhile, the suggestions continued. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa are coming to visit? Maybe we were going to Beachwood, a little vacation place we sometimes visit in the summers, or perhaps up to Whistler, British Columbia, where Nana and Papa have a timeshare. Or maybe it was family day at Ft. Lewis and we were all going to drive down there?

“It’s going to be better than anything you’ve ever done,” Jeff said casually as he walked through the dining room. “It’s going to blow your head off.”

Five sets of eyeballs grew round like moons and five jaws dropped like meteors.

What. could. it. be?

Thankfully, the Fairy Godmother had finally finished all of her secret preparations and had even managed to get a shower so the magic was flowing. Besides, two parents (who shall remain nameless) had finally had just about all they could take of pure excitement and raw childhood glee, so for the love of Peter Pan, it was time to go!

The clues were in place. The question was, how long would it take them to figure out where they were going?

The first clue was right outside the front door.

The Mother of the Year award goes to the woman who blew up dozens of balloons, created a balloon banner, hid it from five children, and managed to put it up without any of them seeing. Woo hoo!

The night before, I created a balloon banner in Mickey Mouse colors. I dizzied myself blowing up a bunch of balloons, then Jeff blew up a few more. I secured them to a line of dental floss to create a banner. We have yards and yards of dental floss from various Army trainings Jeff has done in which he always seems to acquire a little pack of dental floss. The Army is fastidious about dental hygiene, you know.

Meanwhile, back in the Glover house, I floss about as often as I sleep in.

Ahem.

Good thing there are other uses for dental floss.

Dental floss is perfect for creating a balloon banner because it is strong, lightweight, and practically invisible in between all of those balloons. To create a banner, just tie the floss around the ends of the balloons, trying not to crowd them too much (a mistake I made). If you crowd them, the banner will end up very bunchy. It worked out just fine in this application, but it was very fat and that would have made it more difficult to string up against a wall.

I tied one end of the balloon banner to the railing with black streamers so the kids could “open” the balloon banner when it was time for the adventure!

Under the balloon banner, I placed the first clue, an envelop inscribed with the words Once Upon a Time…

How all good stories begin

I thought Pooh should hold it.

A very useful sort of bear

When it was time, we released the children onto the deck (mad chaos!) and let them read the clue.

Discovering the first clue(s)

The letter inside the envelope contained a poem in squiggly font. It read like this:

Shake a hook,

Kiss a queen,

Go somewhere you’ve never been.

Make a wish,

Dare to dream,

Fly to places yet unseen.

Ride a carpet,

Chase a star,

Doesn’t matter who you are!

Count to three,

Jump right in!

Let the adventure begin…

I made that up myself.

They stopped and looked at each other. Then Faith read it again. What could it mean?

“That’s all Disney stuff!” Jonathan said.

“Are we going to Disney?” Faith asked, wide-eyed.

“No, we couldn’t be going to Disney. We’d have to got to the airport for that,” Jonathan said. “Maybe we’re going on a cruise.”

And here I thought they wouldn’t dream big enough.

Your carriage awaits!

The three older kids jumped in the van while Jeff took the twins on an adventure of their own. We were headed for our first stop, which I knew was Nana’s house, but they didn’t. All they knew was they were going to get another clue when they got there.

On the way, they chatted about their clues and came to the following conclusion:

All the clues in the poem pointed to Disney. We were going to see a Disney parade! No, wait, Jonathan hates parades. We were going to see a Disney movie at the movie theater! The kids had never been to a movie in a movie theater, even though their friend, Caleb, had been to dozens and they weren’t at all jealous. Peter Pan was a particularly strong theme, so it seemed logical that we were going to see Peter Pan in the theater! It totally fit the clues!

Also, the balloon banner was made of red, white, and black. The black was for the pirate in Peter Pan, duh, and clearly, the white and red were meant to represent the colors of the Japanese flag. The kids’ dear friends, Kiri and Moira, are half-Japanese, so obviously we were going to pick them up on the way and take them along too! What fun!

But the car did not go to Kiri and Moira’s house. It went to Nana’s house, where Clue #2 was waiting.

Don’t forget your pixie dust

Come back tomorrow to find out what happened when the kids opened Clue #2, and discover some more fun Disney crafts to do with your own family!