Thursday 10th September

Before I start today's posts I would like to add a couple of points from yesterday's. Firstly I inadvertently forgot to mention that I had a FaceTime call with both my daughters and one granddaughter. Hanna and Evie were in bed 7.30pm as they had just got back from Evie's swimming lesson, Lucy had not long put Martha to bed so I arranged to ring her today, did chat with her and Neil though.

The other thing I didn't t write down was about one of the lovely children at the Village Idol , A young lad, probably about 8 years old rushed over to offer help to a young lad in a wheelchair. He pushed him outside to sign up to do a performance, pushed him back and then on to the stage where he positioned his chair so that he could see the audience and sing. When the lad had finished his song he went back on to the stage and wheeled him off again . How special was that, they were both Wish children too. Made my eyes water, or as Debbie puts it, I washed my eyeballs!

Okay, now to today - I have to confess that so far the highlight today (apart from seeing Martha and hear her saying Grandma) was our lunch. We had decided that with a fairly easy first shift we would go out and have a proper dinner, oh my, did we! We went to the Longhorn Steak House and both had the Ribeye, Debbie with a jacket potato and me with mash, we both had asparagus. It was delicious, a really top steak and the trimmings were great too. To coin a well used americanism it was truly awesome! We have had 3 meals out now, the rest of the time we have snacked albeit healthy snacking  so it was just wonderful to have a real meal.

This morning firstly, it was Mickey Mouse in Julie's Safari Theatre , our job again was to guide the families in and offer to take pictures with their phones, cameras or tablets. We would also de clutter them of bags, hats, sunglasses etc. not a huge number of families but those who came were given a real show by Mickey. We even had our pictures taken on Debbie's phone with him too.

I went back into guest services to see about a paver stone I was looking for for a Make A Wish volunteer in the UK  who had been here with her son, Adam in 2011. They eventually found where it was (it had been moved from its original place because of the building of the new Town Hall) and they emailed me a picture of it which I have sent to the family in Cornwall. Have already received a reply thanking me and saying it had bought a lump to her throat, sorry Rachel, hope Adam enjoys seeing it too.

We also went into the House of Memories and bought a few more bits and bobs to take home as gifts. Sorry Frank, still nothing for you.

No word from Allan today but not really expecting to hear anything as doubt if he has any signal up a mountain.

Tonight was the first repeat shift for Debbie as we both did Winter Wonderland again. Debbie  was Elf Front of House  and ho, ho ho'ed every family into the line so they could come see Santa and of course, get a beautiful gift. I was again in with Santa ( at the photographers request,  well he asked if I was joining him again this week, so I took that as a request!)  it was so much busier than last week, 60 families came through, one 'family' consisted of a large group of Down syndrome children, one of whom was a wish child. They were great and so excited to see Santa. This was not the case with all the children, some seemed  to be scared stiff, in fact tonight there were such a lot of scared children. Santa really tried and succeeded in most cases to relax the children enough to get their picture taken. I did help a little as when a child was sobbing I started singing Jingle Bells and believe it or not, despite my singing she stopped and we got a smile! I expect possibly in sympathy. There was a large group of Disney volunteers there tonight which was a great help as regular volunteers were low in numbers.

Well part of this trip is coming to an end as Debbie returns back to the UK on Saturday morning, so just two shifts left to do for her. Let's hope tomorrow is as good as today