As we boarded the Disney Cruise, we could barely contain our excitement – it was almost time to put up our Fish Extender (FE) and start giving our gifts away! (For those that are new to this blog, you can read more about Fish Extenders here.) We had a list of 10 families – 41 people people in all, and bags of small gifts organized by cabin number.
Since everyone’s luggage would arrive at various times throughout the day, we had to wait a bit before we could RAK the others. We hung our FE outside our door with hopes that someone would Pixie Dust us during the week.
Understanding that we were late to join the FE group, I had already prepped my kiddos not to expect many gifts. “Remember,” I cautioned, “This is more about giving than getting. We may not get anything at all, but think of how happy the others will be to receive our surprises!”
We decided to RAK a few families each day and agreed that if their FE was filled by someone else we would try again when it was empty. Oh, if you could have been a fly on the wall to see us trying to hide our treasures as we walked through the narrow halls, always wondering if we were passing by the family we would soon bless. We felt like spies on a recon mission!
The first door we came to had a fun surprise for us – a magnetic scrabble board on their door! We added our word “fun” and filled their FE. Then we went up a floor and filled a few more.
The next morning, we grabbed a cup of hot chocolate from Deck 9 and laughed about how much fun it was to give to others the day before. We searched the faces of the passengers seated around us wondering, “Could this be the Mann family? Maybe that’s the Kennedy family over there…”
Walking back towards our cabin, we talked about who to RAK and made a plan for organizing their gifts. Then, as we turned the corner, we received our own surprise – someone had blessed US by filling our fish extender in the short time we were away! The kids were SO excited and couldn’t wait to see what treasures were hidden in their FE pockets. Little did we know, this was the first of many gifts we would receive throughout the week!
Check back tomorrow to see a sample of the FE treasures we received – it was like Christmas morning each time we returned to our cabin!
