Words…..there are none.

For the past 24 hours I have tried to think of what to say.  I have tried to put myself in the parents shoes. I have asked many questions.  I have tried to put this all into perspective.  And all these hours later, I can’t do any of these things.  There are no words.  I cannot imagine.  I have no answers.  And this makes no sense.

This is a picture of Chase and Cierra.  Chase was 2 and Cierra, 3.  They are playing in the Seven Seas Lagoon in Walt Disney World (Florida).  They were happy to be here – The Happiest Place on Earth.  Everything is real.  Everything is fun.  It’s a child’s paradise. (Heck, I LOVE it there and thought about going there for our 25th anniversary, lol)

Every year for many, Spring Break meant to pack up the motor home and travel 14 hours to see this sign

Ahh so exciting.  And our favorite place was the campground –

This boat was our means of transportation and oh so fun.  No worries about parking and the view was awesome.

Sometimes we would just take the boat over to the Wilderness Lodge..the ride was always relaxing and the water way was pretty big –

We would go all day long.  And each night around 9 pm we would gather at the dock waiting for the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL boat parade of lights.  We would sit on the beach with our blankets.  The kids would splash in the water.  It was OK.  Or maybe even go watch a movie and roast marshmallows. Regardless, being out after dark was a given.  The campground was safe.  There were always people around.  Our biggest fear was the peacock, lol.

Wow – yesterday I was snapped into reality and realized how fortunate we really were.  That could have been us any one of those years.  And, every visit we had someone else’s child with us.

Ugh.  In a split second some family from Nebraska’s lives were changed.  FOREVER.  I just CANNOT imagine.

I woke up in the night wondering how they are – what are they doing?  How do they pack up their things and go back home without one of their children?  They came to Disney World.  Mickey probably waved at them –

and now it’s a place they probably want to forget or never visit again.  I don’t know what I would do but it has to be hard.

So I dug out some pictures of year after year, Chase in the water.  He’s a water child – middle name Bayley…so to him, it was just normal to have fun at this beach every year.  One year he and Ronnie even rented the little speed boats.  (eyes open wide)

 

So the purpose of this post?  It’s to say that in ALL the years we visited Disney during Spring Break, I NEVER, NOT ONCE saw a sign that warned me of alligators.  Seriously?  I am petrified of them so if I had any idea that there was a possibility of one (or more) being in that body of water, I would NEVER have let my children play there.  As I listen to the news and hear of their process to remove alligators larger than 4′ tells me that they knew they were there.  If so, then WHY were there no signs?  That’s not for me to answer but more and more families are saying the same thing.  Very sad and hopefully things will change so no other family has to go through this nightmare.

I guess all we can do is pray for the family.  Pray for the strength to get through this and find peace somehow in the little time they had with that precious little boy and have some good memories from this magical place!