How this Trip Came About
Well,
maybe just a bit more history to put things in perspective. We have had a tradition of doing one
“big vacation” every year, and we generally alternate who picks it.
Then of course, we sneak in several smaller trips in between.
(A lot of the Disney trips in my last post were these “smaller trips”) I'm careful not to call these smaller trips "vacations." But DH accuses me of slipping in more and more of them every year, lol!
These are the
“big vacations” we have done so far, and who chose them.
(And a couple that are yet to come!)
2005 (Jaime) -
Hawaii, Island of Kauai. (Left Lily with the grandparents for this one, we’re so bad!) Actually spent very little time on the beach, did a lot of hiking and exploring.
2006 (Brian) -
Yellowstone, Wyoming. Lily’s first “big vacation” at 2yo. Stayed in the park at the Snow Lodge, so many wonderful memories that week.
2007 (Jaime) -
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Our only all-inclusive vacation so far. A lot of time spent in the pool! And one adventure on a pirate ship.
2008 (Lily) -
Disney World. This was THE trip that started it all, at the Poly.
2009 (Brian) -
Glacier National Park, Montana. Lots of hiking and sightseeing, and an overnight backpacking adventure.
2010 (Lily) -
Disney World. With the ILs at CBR, the trip that I was pregnant with Owen.
2011 (Jaime) -
Negril, Jamaica.
Beaches resort. Weather wasn’t great all week, but enjoyed some pool time and meeting the Sesame Street characters.
2012 (Brian) -
Yosemite, California. Brian always picks national parks, lol! This one didn’t disappoint, lots of hiking, biking, backpacking, and general cuteness from 1-year old Owen.
2013 (Jaime) -
Disney World. YC, and the trip that ended up being very different, and possibly our last ever “big trip” here.
(Probably has the MOST effect on our currently planned Universal trip)
2014 (Lily) -
New York City, Washington DC, & Williamsburg, VA. A whole east-coast tour! Saw all the major landmarks, and 4th of July fireworks from the Capitol Lawn.
2015 (Brian) -
Seattle & Olympic National Park, WA. Fell in love with the part of the country! Brian stayed an extra week to do a guided mountaineering trip.
2016 (Jaime) -
Universal Studios, FL. THIS trip, obviously, yet to come!
2017 (Lily) -
7 night Western Caribbean Cruise, NCL Escape. She’s been begging to do a cruise for years. To date, we’ve booked 3 others that we later canceled. Hopefully this one sticks!
We should probably give Owen his first pick soon, seeing as how he’s already a year older than Lily was when she chose Disney World.
Of course, she had a little help with that one. Maybe 2018
So, for this trip, it really goes back to
2013, our Disney World trip where my
oh-so-perfect plans fell apart. The week ended up being very different than what I planned. We changed almost all of our
ADRS while we were there, changed our
touring style, and did a
bunch of stuff we had never done before.
This was my plan:
At first when we got home,
I felt defeated. How had I blown the plans THAT badly? But after some reflection, it became obvious that we simply needed to
try new things. I had to let go of my obsession with our 2008 trip, and stop trying to repeat it. All of our best memories from this trip were when we did new and different things.
Our repeats always fell flat.
So, we started talking. Maybe we needed to
shake things up a bit. Not try to do the same Disney trip every 2-3 years. Maybe we should try a
cruise, or go to
Universal instead…
These ideas rattled around for a year or so.
(We already had our east-coast adventure planned for 2014) Finally, in late 2014, we booked our first
Disney Cruise, for
March 2016. Later found out it would be a
Star Wars cruise,
icing on the cake! And planned a summer trip (for 2015) to FL - we would spend half the week at
Disney water parks, and half at
Universal.
(This was not to be our “big vacation” though, just taking advantage of some time Brian already had off work, and we would combine it with a visit to my family)
You may notice that both of those should have happened already, but are missing from my list. Well… I had been worried all along about doing a summer trip to FL.
I HATE heat.
And humidity. I live in Colorado, remember??? So I was already having second thoughts.
And then... Lily’s swim team announced their “travel meet” for the year, the same week we were going to FL. It was across the state, an area we had never been to (
Grand Junction, CO).
So, we decided to make a small vacation out of that instead, and push our
Universal trip back to
December (2015). It would be cooler, though more crowded. But the kids thought it was really cool that we were actually flying out on Christmas morning.
And then… September came. And Brian took the job with
Google.
Which meant we had to move to Boulder. And he would be starting over with vacation time accrual. For a lot of reasons,
a December vacation just wasn’t looking like a good idea. And maybe not the cruise either. I had been having second thoughts about the cruise already, so it was an easy decision to cancel.
New plan, kids and I would come down to FL for
spring break (instead of the cruise) and spend a few days at
WDW, then DH would join us for a few days at
Universal.
And then… we found out about Lily’s water polo tournament in
California. So we canceled all our spring break plans to go to
Disneyland instead. And rescheduled
Universal for
August. Yep,
back to summer. And just over a year past when we were originally going to go. Before this, we had an
Alaskan cruise scheduled for August, but the family voted unanimously that they would rather go to
Universal. So, by default, it ended up becoming our
"big trip" for the year. The previous plans only had it being one of our "smaller trips", and add-on to something else.
And then… I realized I was being stupid. Our biggest limiting factor is Brian’ vacation time.
(Unfortunately he only gets 3 weeks/year at Google, he had gotten spoiled by getting 5 weeks at Adobe.) But he does get off 2 days for the
4th of July. So if we scheduled our trip then, it would “cost” us 2 days less. So we moved it YET AGAIN.
It’s 5th incarnation, I believe. Hopefully this one sticks, as I’ve now done some things that I think may be non-refundable.
And that, my friends, is how a vacation comes about.