bettymae1121
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2010
Pre-trip Report, part 1 – A little rain must fall
Author’s Note: Even though I’m not going to post this pre-trip report until just before our vacation in April 2018, I wrote Parts 1 and 2 in October and November of 2017and Part 3 in February 2018.
Additional Author’s Note: This is a long pre-trip report. It may even be longer than the actual trip report! This is because I feel that for WDW, planning is half the fun. It can also be challenging, and I felt that maybe if I showed my thought processes while planning, the “method to the madness” so to speak, that it might be helpful to other’s who aren’t quite sure where to start.
Cast of Characters
Bettymae – Yours truly! 41 year old wife, mother, chief, cook and bottle washer.
Grumpy – Also known as DH. 45 years old, loves WDW - but doesn’t want to admit it most of the time.
Her Most Royal Majesty, Dr. Princess-Jedi-Ninja DD, age 6. A princess, and a Jedi/Ninja? Yup. Also a future scientist, doctor and police officer. Hey, she has goals!
I’m starting this trip report on Halloween Eve, 2017. A year ago tomorrow, on Halloween Day 2016, this photo was taken of my dad and my daughter:
A lot has changed since then. Dad had surgery a few days before I took this photo at the Halloween party at Dad’s senior living home. The week following this picture he had complications that landed him in the hospital and then in a rehab/nursing home for a few weeks (including over Thanksgiving). He recovered enough to go home, but his health continued to slowly fade over the winter and spring.
In January 2017 I made some preliminary plans to try and take a WDW vacation May of 2017. It had been a few years since we went, our last trip was in spring of 2011, right before I got pregnant with Princess-Jedi DD (like, just before. She might even be a souvenir of the trip…). In fact, we hadn’t had a real vacation since she was born, all of our travels since her birth had been to visit far-flung family. While it was nice to see our relatives and the trips were overall okay, even enjoyable…it’s still not what I’d call “vacation”.
Anyway, so I cleared a week of vacation at work, Grumpy did the same. I booked a week at the Dolphin, and even made a few dinning reservations. But a few weeks later, after looking at the budget and giving things some more thought, I decided we needed to wait until after we moved over the summer of 2018 for financial reasons (down payment and all that). And really every time I thought about the trip, instead of feeling excited - I just felt sort of…anxious. As much as we didn’t want to wait until what was looking like 2019, well – it was the responsible adult thing to do.
Maybe I’m just in tune with the Universe. Or maybe the Universe knew the ****-storm our lives would soon be and threw me a bone, perhaps. Because the week before our planned-but-canceled WDW trip, Grumpy wound up in the hospital himself with a serious medical issue. Had the trip still be planned, it would have been in serious jeopardy of being canceled last minute (and we’d have been out a small fortune in costs, I didn’t think to buy trip insurance). He recovered but then wound up in the hospital again for another week mid-June.
Dad was hospitalized in early July for a few days, then went back home.
Grumpy was hospitalized again for a few days again at the end of July.
In August Dad got sick again, and this time he simply wasn’t going to recover. He passed away the same week Princess-Jedi DD started Kindergarten.
During Dad’s final illness I was also having issues at work. Plus both our cars wound up in the shop.
And a medical issue of my own that I thought had been resolved about 2 ½ years ago cropped back up. So another round of doctor’s appointments, tests, and most likely surgery for me. Yay!
My stress was through the roof, to put it mildly.
So to say we desperately need a vacation would be the understatement of the century. Maybe the millennium.
And I don’t want to wait until 2019 or even later to go to WDW. If this past 12 months has shown me anything is that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. There is ALWAYS going to be something, it is NEVER going to be the perfect time. Sure, we all have to adult – make sure the mortgage is paid and food is on the table. Savings for emergencies and tuck away something for retirement and the kid’s college. But beyond that?
Carpe Diem, y’all, seriously.
As to the finances - which was the main reason I canceled the May 2017 trip – well Dad was no Warren Buffet but even after being split 3 ways between my brothers and myself, the money from his estate made it so the down payment for the house we want to buy next summer is no longer an issue. The money we were planning to save for the house is now free for other uses. At this point taking a family vacation before we move makes as much sense as trying to do it after, maybe even more so.
So late September 2017, after life had settled down and I had time to process, well - everything, I decided we were going to WDW in spring of 2018. Still I’m married and at least in theory I do need to get DH on board…
Me to Grumpy “Dear, we need a vacation. A real, family vacation. Just us doing fun stuff, no visiting out of state relatives like we’ve done for every trip since DD was born. I want to go to WDW next spring. What do you think?”
Grumpy replied “Okay”.
Man of few words, that one.
So, with that green light…
Pre-trip Report, part 2 – and it all started with…a metric ton of planning!
Author’s Note: Even though I’m not going to post this pre-trip report until just before our vacation in April 2018, I wrote Parts 1 and 2 in October and November of 2017and Part 3 in February 2018.
Additional Author’s Note: This is a long pre-trip report. It may even be longer than the actual trip report! This is because I feel that for WDW, planning is half the fun. It can also be challenging, and I felt that maybe if I showed my thought processes while planning, the “method to the madness” so to speak, that it might be helpful to other’s who aren’t quite sure where to start.
Cast of Characters
Bettymae – Yours truly! 41 year old wife, mother, chief, cook and bottle washer.
Grumpy – Also known as DH. 45 years old, loves WDW - but doesn’t want to admit it most of the time.
Her Most Royal Majesty, Dr. Princess-Jedi-Ninja DD, age 6. A princess, and a Jedi/Ninja? Yup. Also a future scientist, doctor and police officer. Hey, she has goals!
I’m starting this trip report on Halloween Eve, 2017. A year ago tomorrow, on Halloween Day 2016, this photo was taken of my dad and my daughter:
A lot has changed since then. Dad had surgery a few days before I took this photo at the Halloween party at Dad’s senior living home. The week following this picture he had complications that landed him in the hospital and then in a rehab/nursing home for a few weeks (including over Thanksgiving). He recovered enough to go home, but his health continued to slowly fade over the winter and spring.
In January 2017 I made some preliminary plans to try and take a WDW vacation May of 2017. It had been a few years since we went, our last trip was in spring of 2011, right before I got pregnant with Princess-Jedi DD (like, just before. She might even be a souvenir of the trip…). In fact, we hadn’t had a real vacation since she was born, all of our travels since her birth had been to visit far-flung family. While it was nice to see our relatives and the trips were overall okay, even enjoyable…it’s still not what I’d call “vacation”.
Anyway, so I cleared a week of vacation at work, Grumpy did the same. I booked a week at the Dolphin, and even made a few dinning reservations. But a few weeks later, after looking at the budget and giving things some more thought, I decided we needed to wait until after we moved over the summer of 2018 for financial reasons (down payment and all that). And really every time I thought about the trip, instead of feeling excited - I just felt sort of…anxious. As much as we didn’t want to wait until what was looking like 2019, well – it was the responsible adult thing to do.
Maybe I’m just in tune with the Universe. Or maybe the Universe knew the ****-storm our lives would soon be and threw me a bone, perhaps. Because the week before our planned-but-canceled WDW trip, Grumpy wound up in the hospital himself with a serious medical issue. Had the trip still be planned, it would have been in serious jeopardy of being canceled last minute (and we’d have been out a small fortune in costs, I didn’t think to buy trip insurance). He recovered but then wound up in the hospital again for another week mid-June.
Dad was hospitalized in early July for a few days, then went back home.
Grumpy was hospitalized again for a few days again at the end of July.
In August Dad got sick again, and this time he simply wasn’t going to recover. He passed away the same week Princess-Jedi DD started Kindergarten.
During Dad’s final illness I was also having issues at work. Plus both our cars wound up in the shop.
And a medical issue of my own that I thought had been resolved about 2 ½ years ago cropped back up. So another round of doctor’s appointments, tests, and most likely surgery for me. Yay!
My stress was through the roof, to put it mildly.
So to say we desperately need a vacation would be the understatement of the century. Maybe the millennium.
And I don’t want to wait until 2019 or even later to go to WDW. If this past 12 months has shown me anything is that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. There is ALWAYS going to be something, it is NEVER going to be the perfect time. Sure, we all have to adult – make sure the mortgage is paid and food is on the table. Savings for emergencies and tuck away something for retirement and the kid’s college. But beyond that?
Carpe Diem, y’all, seriously.
As to the finances - which was the main reason I canceled the May 2017 trip – well Dad was no Warren Buffet but even after being split 3 ways between my brothers and myself, the money from his estate made it so the down payment for the house we want to buy next summer is no longer an issue. The money we were planning to save for the house is now free for other uses. At this point taking a family vacation before we move makes as much sense as trying to do it after, maybe even more so.
So late September 2017, after life had settled down and I had time to process, well - everything, I decided we were going to WDW in spring of 2018. Still I’m married and at least in theory I do need to get DH on board…
Me to Grumpy “Dear, we need a vacation. A real, family vacation. Just us doing fun stuff, no visiting out of state relatives like we’ve done for every trip since DD was born. I want to go to WDW next spring. What do you think?”
Grumpy replied “Okay”.
Man of few words, that one.
So, with that green light…
Pre-trip Report, part 2 – and it all started with…a metric ton of planning!
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