emksmama
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2012
Three weeks til our trip and I'm finally doing a PTR! I'm starting to panic, so I hope that by getting all of my lists, thoughts and concerns in one place, I won't be so overwhelmed I decide to forget the whole thing.
Yeah, right....
Quick intro of our cast of characters, and then into my plans! I'm Amy, age 40, and the only one really "planning" this fabulous family vacation! (more on that in a bit). My DH is Darrell, 42, never been to Disney before, and we have two little princesses...Emily is 9 and Molly is 8. This will be their first trip as well. We live in north central Indiana, about an hour north of Indianapolis. We've been to Florida three times (2005, 2006 & 2011) but always to the beach. We're drivers, so every trip we take our poor minivan!
Darrell and I in Florida last summer at Ft Myers Beach
and my sweetie with his princesses on Father's Day
Also making the trip with us are my parents (late 60's) and my sister (34 and single). My brother and his wife can't get away from work to go, so there will be 7 of us in all. And before anyone asks, NO WE ARE NOT DRIVING together!!! My husband's a saint for even doing a big family vacation, if we were all riding in one car I think he would volunteer to stay home.
This has been the ever-evolving vacation, and just when I think we're set, things change again...heck, we just revamped things yesterday!
Originally, way way back in January or so, my parents started talking about renting a cabin in the Traverse City, MI area. They went last summer for a week and loved it. The four of us prefer going south, but they like to go north. So they emailed some guy a friend of theirs rents a cabin from, to see what was available in July that would sleep 7-9 people. Never heard from him until mid April, when he finally wrote back and said he had some availability, so we all checked our calendars and picked the week of July 23 that works for all of us. And of course, by mid April, NOTHING was available. Sheesh.
So Mom calls me to come over one night to help Dad pick something else around that area where we might like to vacation. He was finding some rentals in the $2000-3000 range. Mom pulled out a map of Michigan, and said "Here honey, where would YOUR family like to go?" I knew we could get a condo on the Gulf coast for that price or substantially less, so I jokingly said "For that money, we'd rather go 1100 miles south!" She said "Well, let's see what's down that way!" My dad is retired from the USAF (1962-1999), so he hopped on the Armed Forces Vacation Club site, and we saw the link about Disney's Military Salute being extended. Dad said "Hey, let's see how much it would be for us to do Disney!" and that was it! Within minutes we were checking out Shades of Green and making plans!
posting before I lose...
Yeah, right....
Quick intro of our cast of characters, and then into my plans! I'm Amy, age 40, and the only one really "planning" this fabulous family vacation! (more on that in a bit). My DH is Darrell, 42, never been to Disney before, and we have two little princesses...Emily is 9 and Molly is 8. This will be their first trip as well. We live in north central Indiana, about an hour north of Indianapolis. We've been to Florida three times (2005, 2006 & 2011) but always to the beach. We're drivers, so every trip we take our poor minivan!
Darrell and I in Florida last summer at Ft Myers Beach
and my sweetie with his princesses on Father's Day
Also making the trip with us are my parents (late 60's) and my sister (34 and single). My brother and his wife can't get away from work to go, so there will be 7 of us in all. And before anyone asks, NO WE ARE NOT DRIVING together!!! My husband's a saint for even doing a big family vacation, if we were all riding in one car I think he would volunteer to stay home.
This has been the ever-evolving vacation, and just when I think we're set, things change again...heck, we just revamped things yesterday!
Originally, way way back in January or so, my parents started talking about renting a cabin in the Traverse City, MI area. They went last summer for a week and loved it. The four of us prefer going south, but they like to go north. So they emailed some guy a friend of theirs rents a cabin from, to see what was available in July that would sleep 7-9 people. Never heard from him until mid April, when he finally wrote back and said he had some availability, so we all checked our calendars and picked the week of July 23 that works for all of us. And of course, by mid April, NOTHING was available. Sheesh.
So Mom calls me to come over one night to help Dad pick something else around that area where we might like to vacation. He was finding some rentals in the $2000-3000 range. Mom pulled out a map of Michigan, and said "Here honey, where would YOUR family like to go?" I knew we could get a condo on the Gulf coast for that price or substantially less, so I jokingly said "For that money, we'd rather go 1100 miles south!" She said "Well, let's see what's down that way!" My dad is retired from the USAF (1962-1999), so he hopped on the Armed Forces Vacation Club site, and we saw the link about Disney's Military Salute being extended. Dad said "Hey, let's see how much it would be for us to do Disney!" and that was it! Within minutes we were checking out Shades of Green and making plans!
posting before I lose...