Escaping the Family Craziness at Christmas is making me Crazy!!!!!!!

[davishalfdoz]

Okay so I am fairly new to the boards. I have snooped around quite a bit and posted occasionally (lots of great info out there), so I thought I would attempt my very own pre-trippie.

Allow me to introduce our cast of characters:

Me-32-mom of 3, stepmom of 3 more (all beautiful btw), work full-time (for now anyway), full-time student (I'm gonna be a teacher someday:teacher: ), and team mom for DS12's baseball team. Chronic over acheiver or glutton for punishment, I haven't yet decided:confused3 .

DH-39-Randy-father of 5 adoptive father of one (mine from first marriage).he is less than enthusiastic about our first trip to WDW:snooty: , but I just know that once we get there he will be the biggest kid. He is the greatest dad in the world as far as I'm concerned and I think his kids would agree, on most days anyway.

DD21-"A"-She is a go get 'em girl and unfortunately won't make this trip with us. She is just to busy making her way in the world (the hard way, I think:rolleyes1, but it's her way) and she can't afford to take off for an extended vacation.

DS20-"germ"-God love him, he just doesn't have a grasp on the real world yet. He was living with us from November until a few days ago when he decided to go back to his mom's. He was suppose to stay with us to get "it" together and be a man, but our rules were just not for him. It's a case of tough love that didn't work. Hopefully one day he will see what we were trying to do for him.:sad1: He also will not make this trip because I can't reward bad behavior.

DD14-"goon"-The catalyst behind this trip. She lives with her mom and we only see her about once a year.:sad2:. She is utterly digusted that she has lived the majority of her life in Fl and has never been to WDW. While on our summer trip touring Six Flags parks in TX she stated that our next vacation should be to WDW and we should also go to SW, Universal and why not just go on to Tampa and visit Busch Gardens...well, hon hate it for you, but it ain't getting that good:rolleyes:.

DS12-"chachi"-yes he somewhat resembles Scott Baio in his younger years. He has acquired this name from a friends mom and it stuck. He is a great kid. He is very mature for his age, very smart and responsible. I count on him alot. He loves history and just this summer realized that coaster are fairly safe. Now he loves them and is studying their history every chance he gets.

DD9-"Roo"-she is her mother's child to a fault. She is a gifted child and the mother hen of the bunch. She keeps us on schedule and keeps me in check most of the time. Unfortunately she is at the mercy of her brothers most of the time for being the only sister in the house. :sad1:

DS8-"Boo-bear"-oh this monster:scared1: ...don't get me wrong, he is not a bad child. He is just rambuncious and unpredictable. A daredevil for sure and every day is an adventure, but he is very loving and tries really hard to behave.

So there you have the crew, next up the idea:idea:

[davishalfdoz]

Okay, so the story begins. Let me start by saying that both of my parents passed when I was fairly young (mom, I was 16 and dad, I was 21) and I am an only child, so my husband has no in-laws to deal with. That being said, I would also like to say that I love my husbands family dearly, especially my mil and fil. They are fantastic and are always there for us. He does have some brothers and sisters however that drama seems to follow, not all but some. This tends to make holidays a little chaotic and stressful. I love to have family gatherings at my home and did so this Thanksgiving and Christmas. But, for some reason this Christmas I was not feeling the joy of the season. One brother did not show, because he didn't want to come without presents, or so he said. I tend to think it was because he didn't want to stop drinking long enough to show:snooty: , because he knows we do not care about gifts. Anyway...moving on...

I came up with an idea to eliminate the Christmas Craziness and get away from the drama...family Christmas vacation. But where to???????

I ask the kiddos where they might like to go. Roo and Chachi said Hawaii and Boo-bear said "I dunno":confused3, but Roo didn't want to fly. Well, now what? I guess I will have to come up with something....ah yes what had Goon said...oh yes, WDW. So I ask the kiddos about that and it was settled.

Now, how would this come about. You see I tend to keep my children unaware of our financial standing by letting them believe we are always broke. It really eliminates the "I wants". Eventhough, they usually get everything they want, they just don't ever throw a fit for it. How was I going to do this and have them not get suspicious about the money?

:idea: AHha! Santa Claus. They could ask good ole Saint Nick for the trip as their Christmas present for this year. This would be perfect. (I know some of you are thinking that Chachi is 12 and still believes???, but in my house "if you don't believe, you don't recieve) This will cut my Christmas shopping down tremendously also. Perfect. So that is what I did. Roo set out to email Santa and we began planning "in hopes" that he would oblige.:yay:

Now to approach "Santa" aka DH about this. I had to do this the right way because he would much rather spend 8 grand on fishing than on a vacation to WDW (I just don't understand him). So I started with the facts. We usually spend quite a bit on Christmas presents for all the kids and I figured up what we usually spend for "Santa" and from us to kids and other family and it came to approx $6500. Also, our usually family vacation cost us around 3000 a year so we could actually save money by doing this. AHHHHH gears are turning...I see them. We would just have to explain to family members that we didn't really want to exchange gifts this year, saves them money too. Do you really think they will disagree? OK, now he is coming around.

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! We're going to WDW:yay: :banana: :cool1:

Next up Where will we stay, what will will we do.....??????

[j_lehr]

Sounds like you have a great family! We went to Disney for Christmas in 2006 for the exact reason - to get away! My parents live 8 hours away and his live 5 minutes (although they spend every Christmas at his sister's house, who lives in Ft Lauderdale) so it was just a matter of declaring independance and doing our own thing! We had an amazing time!!

Looking forward to hearing more...

Jes

[davishalfdoz]

Sounds like you have a great family! We went to Disney for Christmas in 2006 for the exact reason - to get away! My parents live 8 hours away and his live 5 minutes (although they spend every Christmas at his sister's house, who lives in Ft Lauderdale) so it was just a matter of declaring independance and doing our own thing! We had an amazing time!!

Looking forward to hearing more...

Jes

Wow...my first response. Thanks.

Hope to have more this weekend.

[davishalfdoz]

So Santa is hard at work on this request, good thing there is a year to get it together right? Who knew how busy the elves would be making this happen, so santa called in mom to help. Well, I researched prices and could never get the WDW website to accomodate the 6 of us for the dates that I wanted which were Dec. 20th-27, so off to the travel agent I went. Within minutes she had us all set with my dates in an ASMu family suite with parkhoppers w/waterpark and DD options and the DxDP. Woohoo! :banana:

Now to let the kiddos know. Santa had a plan. Fortunately, moms are kept in the loop.;) Personalized bags were created from Disneyshopping.com for each kiddo, so I had to wait. It was killing me for them to not know. I heard questions everyday about whether Santa was going to say yes. Oh I should explain something...I started working on a scrapbook pretty much the minute the decision was made. So here is mom working on a scrapbook for a trip which in there mind was not yet happening. They thought I was insane:rotfl: I let them know that I had faith in Santa and if they didn't we were in trouble. ;)

Finally the bags arrived UPS from the North Pole with a kind letter from the jolly old elf and everyone was relieved that all my hard work was not in vain:goodvibes .

Things were looking really great, so I bought the unofficial guide to WDW, joined tourguidemike and found the DISboards.

Then a big uhoh!!!! People were not happy with the dining plan. Did I make a mistake. Do we really need 3 table service meals? What do I do? Well off to the travel agent again to work out some details that Santa couldn't fix for us. We down graded to the DDP, because after all we are not there just to eat. This freed up enough money to add a day to the beginning and the end of the trip.:woohoo: so our dates are now Dec 19th-28. Ten whole days at WDW...now that's magic:wizard:

Next up scrapbooking and creative disigns

[joelp]

I had to do this the right way because he would much rather spend 8 grand on fishing than on a vacation to WDW (I just don't understand him).

Sounds like you're planning a great trip!!

BTW - there is "fishing" at WDW - sort of ... I guess ... (if that helps ...) :)

Or the hubby can just spend hours at The Living Seas ... day dreaming ... :rotfl2:

:fish: :fish: :fish:


And don't fret - the DDP will be plenty of food ...

I'll be lurking ... :rolleyes1