Today is October 23, 2012. If all goes according to plan, we will be arriving in Orlando, FL for our first ever family vacation to Disney World next fall (yes, it's a year away. yes, I'm already talking about it. Dreaming about it. Planning for it. You know me and my planning...something like this? I can't stop myself.) While we are still working on planning details, deciding which resort to stay at, and pinning down the dates for sure, it has not stopped me from daydreaming about going!
Brian and I had talked about going to Disney before, but always assumed that we would go when BOTH kids were older (you know, the whole "I'm not paying all of this money for no one to remember it!" mentality). I get that mentality, I totally do. We had that mentality up until just a few short months ago. But then we thought to ourselves, "well, what about us?" And no, not us being selfish and wanting to go there for the rides....but the "us" that will experience our hearts melting the first time those kids see the characters and they break out into a huge
So, all of a sudden, we found ourselves talking about making it a reality. Once we found out that Liam is completely FREE before the age of 3, we were sold on making it happen in 2013. Then we wondered if maybe the grandparents would want to join us? It started out as kind of a joke, I said to my mom one day that we decided to go to Disney and that I was signing them up to come as part of their grandparent duties. Who wouldn't want to see their adorable ONLY grandsons experiencing Disney magic for the first time? I later realized that my mom thought I was being serious in saying they had to come, so I told her they were, of course, under no obligation to join us if they didn't want to. But, the seed had been planted by that point....GG was excited and ready to go! Pappy, on the other hand, well....let's just say that amusement parks are not exactly his cup of tea and he has offered multiple times to stay home with Gracie. But, I think that's all a ruse to mask his true excitement over the trip! We're onto you, Dad.
Nana and PopPop were easy to convince to go, so now we have a whole entourage ready to show up and take over Disney next fall!!
I ordered the free planning DVD from the Disney site about 2 months ago; I always get the mail after work and put it in my work bag until I can look at it later. My work bag generally gets tossed on the kitchen floor when we come in from daycare pick up. Well, Jake sees the DVD in my bag that day and recognizes the Disney logo somehow (well played, Disney marketing department...well played) and asks if we can watch the DVD. Truth be told, I was pretty excited to watch it myself, so I said sure, let's pop it in! What's the harm, right?
Well, I can now tell you what the harm is. The harm is that a 4 year old has zero concept of time, and when he asked if we were going to Disney World, my reply of "someday we'll go there" got twisted in his mind. When I picked him up at school the next day, his teacher said, "Hey, are you guys going to Disney World?" I told her we planned on going at some point in a year or so, and she laughed and said, "ahh...I see. Jake told me today that you guys were going to Disney World in a few weeks, and started naming all of the rides he was going to go on. It sounded like he had quite the plan already!"
Oops. He still talks about it frequently. He has a pretend cash register and one day I heard him and Liam playing Disney World....Jake was selling Liam tickets to the park, telling him where the rides were, then they had a parade.
So, that's our family vacation update for now. If you need to find me over the next year, I will be creating spreadsheets, checklists, and diagrams for everyone to enjoy on our trip.
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