Consider having fun
Having fun in the rain, then and now:
Drew and Matt wearing the SAME PONCHOS at EPCOT Center in 1995 and 2003
“If you only do what’s important, you’ll never have any fun, unless you consider having fun important.” — Ashleigh Brilliant
If you don’t consider having fun important, I hope you’ll think about it and change your mind! Recently we had a discussion in the comments here, about end-of-life wishes, and things people wish they had done more often. A lot of the wishes center on doing fun or important things – often both. But one thing nobody in our family will probably ever say is “I wish we’d gone to Disney parks more often,” since we enjoyed more than our fair share of visits there.
We love Disney, at least the Disney movies that were produced up through the mid-1990’s, and all the classic characters. And we never tire of going to the Disney parks; we’ve literally lost count of how many times we’ve gone to either the California Disneyland parks, or the Walt Disney World parks in Florida. We never got too old to enjoy it, and some of our happiest memories happened there.
The photos above were taken more than eight years apart, in almost exactly the same location at EPCOT Center — and the boys are wearing the EXACT SAME RAIN PONCHOS! I am not making this up. (I told you I never threw anything away.) I bought each of us a rain poncho right before we visited Walt Disney World in 1995, while we lived in Hawaii, and we found them so useful I kept them and took them along on every subsequent Disney trip, long after the boys were wearing adult sizes. The great thing about a poncho is that one size fits all.
When we had some rain during our 2003 trip to Disney World (taken to celebrate Matt’s 18th birthday) Drew thought it would be fun to get another photo like the one we had taken so many years before. I don’t know which was more fun, taking the photos or comparing them years afterward!
I hope you are making time for enjoying funny moments with people you love, and maybe preserving those memories in photos or journals, or both. Someday it will seem way more important than it might seem now.
Happy Lunar New Year!
One year ago today
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
Defeat Despair 
Julia, I love this delightful photo set! One thing about plastic ponchos: we know they don’t shrink over the years! So these ponchos clearly have a tale to tell. It’s obvious to me that it was both important and fun to take the second photo. Based on the posture of the boys (young men) in the second photo, I’m guessing that they understood this, too.
Yes, it was Drew’s suggestion. Not long after we did this, there seemed to be a sort of fad for people to take similar photos in the same location many years later, with the same subjects present. Those ponchos are still quite functional. I took them to our Disney trips in 2019 and 2020 (Matt and I got in just under the wire, in February, before Covid hit hard and brought shutdowns) although we didn’t need to use them. I forgot to take them to Universal a couple of weeks ago, but luckily we didn’t need them. I do plan to take them to our upcoming Disney visit.
That’s so cool, you go every year! I have a friend in California that bought a season pass to Disneyland one year. I thought – how fun, to be able to get so familiar with an iconic and interesting location. When my kids were very young, I kept annual passes to the (then nearby) Minnesota Zoo. I imagine it would be similar, but differently entertaining.
Annual passes — to Disney, Colonial Williamsburg, or anywhere — are wonderful insofar as they allow you to take things in small(er) doses rather than trying to cram everything into one vacation of a few days or even a week. Disney especially is far more fun when one does not have to push to the point of exhaustion or wait in lines to make sure this or that “gets done.”
I love these photos! What a great idea!
Thanks Susan. It was Drew’s idea to pose in the same location. It was a lot of fun.
One of my FUN rainy times was walking the path behind your home! Delightful beauty & loving company!!! The photos you took are treasures to me!
Mary Ann, I’m so glad you were able to walk with me. They are extending the trail system and eventually it is supposed to connect to the larger trail system just north of us. The entire Capital region has a lot of impressive trails, few of which I’ve explored.
Mary Ann, I’m so glad you were able to walk with me. They are extending the trail system and eventually it is supposed to connect to the larger trail system just north of us. The entire Capital region has a lot of impressive trails, few of which I’ve explored.