Disney Holiday Firsts at Last! - 2 Days to Go and It's Quiet, Too Quiet

[PracPerfPatricia]

Hey Mike,



Was just wondering how surprising the girls was going? Do they suspect? It's almost just a month...

 

[mnmrmustard]

Mickey Mail is the BEST! I can't wait to get the DME and packet-o-info very quickly!!!

Isn't the element of surprise both exciting and maddening??? I want to be able to leave stuff out and not pack behind a locked door, but oh well. It will be worth it in the end.

Love the Mickey Mail - still waiting impatiently for our travel packet from AAA. The suprise is VERY HARD to keep to ourselves. I'm glad the days are going by pretty fast - I know I couldn't hold out if we weren't so close to the start of laying out the clues.

Hey Mike,



Was just wondering how surprising the girls was going? Do they suspect? It's almost just a month...

Hey Patricia! We start laying out the clues on Monday - not long now before they start their puzzling journey

Oh, and on the subject of the surprise, we went to a local Harvest Festival and ran into a co-worker and her family and she pops off with "so girls, when are you going to leave for Disney World??"



My eyes nearly popped out of my head!

Luckily the girls were facing away from me and DW was more together, answering for them with "December of 2013". The girls chimed in with dejected "yeahs" and "its so far awayyyyy!"

How is the waiting game going on your end of things?

 

[mnmrmustard]

Sorry I haven't been posting updates, haven't been in a very Disney mood this week.

We have been ramping up to move my mother-in-law into an assisted care facility. It has been a very hard experience on her and on the rest of the family but we were finally almost there. We have been taking care of her for over a decade and she had hoped to stay at home her whole life. But she is becoming more of a fall risk and needs more focused care (she fell twice over the summer). We spent the past two months checking out all of the area facilities and doing our homework about them. We found that she could stay at the best one in town. Best record, best staff, best facility overall. We had put down a deposit, had a room assignment, and a move-in date of this Friday.

However, we received a call from their care specialist Monday afternoon stating that she was not going to be accepted to their facility as the RN had deemed her as a "more than one person assist" based on her evaluation. I heard the news from DW, who was crying while she tried to tell me. I was working at a job site in the next county and left work, drove back to town, picked DW up, and drove to the facility. We met with the Director, who was the one who had given us all of the assurances that it was a done deal. He said he still had some say in the situation and would be talking to his boss the next morning.

We waited through a pretty sleepless night and next morning before we heard from him. He said that he was not able to sway either his boss or the RN, both of whom are 4hrs away at the parent facility. I came back down and talked to him again and made it very clear how wrong this situation was and how this mess-up was devastating our family. We can't just go on to the next facility as it will not be nearly as nice as this one. No matter how good the staff and facility is, it will always be compared to what she 'could have had'. In MiL’s eyes every other place will just be a nursing home to stick her in.

A big part of the issue we now face is that we had spent WEEKS assuring MiL that she would be able to stay there. She has always had huge self-esteem issues and didn’t feel worthy of the place. It is by far the nicest facility in town and would have allowed her to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, rather than the studio apartment the other facilities could offer. The amenities at the facility were also noticeably better than the others in town.

The "more than one person assist" reasoning itself made no sense to us as she gets no physical assistance in her daily routine. She moves from bed to chair to fridge to bathroom every day. She does it all herself with the assistance of her Hoveround. We make sure her mini-fridge is stocked with food for breakfast/lunch and beverages and she eats dinner with us. The only other thing we do for her is handle her meds. She is on her own from 8:30am to 3:30pm Monday thru Friday.

So now I sit and wait for a call from the RN to give me a more reasoned explanation as to why she was denied. After all, if she is denied here she could be denied somewhere else for the same reason(s). For now we will look at home care options and will have family come up and stay with her while we are at WDW. I have great trepidation on this as the last time we tried this she ended up taking a trip to the emergency room and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

Please send us lots of P&PD as DW and I sit down with MiL this evening to break the news to her.

 

[Leger13]

Hi Mike! Sorry I have been MIA. As you know I have been neglecting my own ptr haha! Love the pictures from previous trips! I have to agree with Kelly about the Osborne lights. We were there after they turned them on and there was a lower crowd. Still crowded but less people for sure so it was more enjoyable. That's what our plan is this year too. Yay for Disney Mail! We don't get any for this trip since our reservation is room only. Boo! Hope all is well. I tried to get caught up before replying but I probably missed something.

 

[Leger13]

Sorry I haven't been posting updates, haven't been in a very Disney mood this week.

We have been ramping up to move my mother-in-law into an assisted care facility. It has been a very hard experience on her and on the rest of the family but we were finally almost there. We have been taking care of her for over a decade and she had hoped to stay at home her whole life. But she is becoming more of a fall risk and needs more focused care (she fell twice over the summer). We spent the past two months checking out all of the area facilities and doing our homework about them. We found that she could stay at the best one in town. Best record, best staff, best facility overall. We had put down a deposit, had a room assignment, and a move-in date of this Friday.

However, we received a call from their care specialist Monday afternoon stating that she was not going to be accepted to their facility as the RN had deemed her as a "more than one person assist" based on her evaluation. I heard the news from DW, who was crying while she tried to tell me. I was working at a job site in the next county and left work, drove back to town, picked DW up, and drove to the facility. We met with the Director, who was the one who had given us all of the assurances that it was a done deal. He said he still had some say in the situation and would be talking to his boss the next morning.

We waited through a pretty sleepless night and next morning before we heard from him. He said that he was not able to sway either his boss or the RN, both of whom are 4hrs away at the parent facility. I came back down and talked to him again and made it very clear how wrong this situation was and how this mess-up was devastating our family. We can't just go on to the next facility as it will not be nearly as nice as this one. No matter how good the staff and facility is, it will always be compared to what she 'could have had'. In MiL’s eyes every other place will just be a nursing home to stick her in.

A big part of the issue we now face is that we had spent WEEKS assuring MiL that she would be able to stay there. She has always had huge self-esteem issues and didn’t feel worthy of the place. It is by far the nicest facility in town and would have allowed her to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, rather than the studio apartment the other facilities could offer. The amenities at the facility were also noticeably better than the others in town.

The "more than one person assist" reasoning itself made no sense to us as she gets no physical assistance in her daily routine. She moves from bed to chair to fridge to bathroom every day. She does it all herself with the assistance of her Hoveround. We make sure her mini-fridge is stocked with food for breakfast/lunch and beverages and she eats dinner with us. The only other thing we do for her is handle her meds. She is on her own from 8:30am to 3:30pm Monday thru Friday.

So now I sit and wait for a call from the RN to give me a more reasoned explanation as to why she was denied. After all, if she is denied here she could be denied somewhere else for the same reason(s). For now we will look at home care options and will have family come up and stay with her while we are at WDW. I have great trepidation on this as the last time we tried this she ended up taking a trip to the emergency room and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

Please send us lots of P&PD as DW and I sit down with MiL this evening to break the news to her.

oh my goodness I'm so very sorry to hear all of this is happening. I hate to hear how upset Roxy is over this. She is such a sweet woman and doesn't deserve to be sad You either. This just isn't fair that they denied her. I will be praying hard that they have a change of heart and admit her. I do remember when you guys went to WDW and she had a trip to the ER during that time. Definitely don't want that happening again. ((hugs)) to you all!

 

[PracPerfPatricia]

Hey Mike,

I am so very sorry that this is happening to you and Roxy and your girls and your MIL. This really sounds terribly unfair and I'm sending prayers/good wishes your way. Is there a local ombudsman that you can get involved in this situation?

Let us know what happens...

 

[heartpooh]

Prayers for you and your family as you deal with this major setback. I am praying that they have a change of heart and will admit her to the facility you want for her.

 

[disney67]

Love the Mickey Mail - still waiting impatiently for our travel packet from AAA. The suprise is VERY HARD to keep to ourselves. I'm glad the days are going by pretty fast - I know I couldn't hold out if we weren't so close to the start of laying out the clues.




Hey Patricia! We start laying out the clues on Monday - not long now before they start their puzzling journey

Oh, and on the subject of the surprise, we went to a local Harvest Festival and ran into a co-worker and her family and she pops off with "so girls, when are you going to leave for Disney World??"



My eyes nearly popped out of my head!

Luckily the girls were facing away from me and DW was more together, answering for them with "December of 2013". The girls chimed in with dejected "yeahs" and "its so far awayyyyy!"

How is the waiting game going on your end of things?

bet when they said that about disney you guys were like ahhhhhhh what do i say to change this subject quickly . but the funny part was that is how i blabed one year a friend asked and my mouth took off and so did the surprise thank pixies kids do not pay attention some times !!

 

[disney67]

Mike im so sorry to hear about your MIL here is plenty of what you asked for
and extra pixies for your wife i can understand how hard it is on her Major Pixies and hope you can turn Nurse cratchet around to see the light of pixie dust

 

[FauntleroyFAN07]

sorry to hear about all of this.

 

[PracPerfPatricia]

Thinking about you and your family Mike, and hoping all is well...

 

[Trentmom]

So sorry to hear that.

I hope you get an explanation for the more than one assist person. That makes no sense from what you say about her.

Maybe someone made an error in paperwork or something

Hugs to you all

 

[mnmrmustard]

Hi Mike! Sorry I have been MIA. As you know I have been neglecting my own ptr haha! Love the pictures from previous trips! I have to agree with Kelly about the Osborne lights. We were there after they turned them on and there was a lower crowd. Still crowded but less people for sure so it was more enjoyable. That's what our plan is this year too. Yay for Disney Mail! We don't get any for this trip since our reservation is room only. Boo! Hope all is well. I tried to get caught up before replying but I probably missed something.

No problem with being MIA, I know how it is. Thank you on the pics and I know we'll figure out those Osborne Lights one way or another.

Awww, no Disney Mail for you? Bummer.

oh my goodness I'm so very sorry to hear all of this is happening. I hate to hear how upset Roxy is over this. She is such a sweet woman and doesn't deserve to be sad You either. This just isn't fair that they denied her. I will be praying hard that they have a change of heart and admit her. I do remember when you guys went to WDW and she had a trip to the ER during that time. Definitely don't want that happening again. ((hugs)) to you all!

Thank you very much for the good thoughts Carla - I'll give a general update on the situation at the bottom of the post

Hey Mike,

I am so very sorry that this is happening to you and Roxy and your girls and your MIL. This really sounds terribly unfair and I'm sending prayers/good wishes your way. Is there a local ombudsman that you can get involved in this situation?

Let us know what happens...

Thank you for the prayers & good wishes Patricia We had a couple of directions we could have taken but have decided not to pursue it. We don't want to have her in a place that will make such a big mess of just trying to get her in.

Prayers for you and your family as you deal with this major setback. I am praying that they have a change of heart and will admit her to the facility you want for her.

Thank you so much for the prayers, they are much appreciated
No change of heart but things will work out. See below for an update.

bet when they said that about disney you guys were like ahhhhhhh what do i say to change this subject quickly . but the funny part was that is how i blabed one year a friend asked and my mouth took off and so did the surprise thank pixies kids do not pay attention some times !!

Yes, we got off the subject as quickly as I could. And I hear ya about blabbing to a friend, I've almost done it a couple of times in front of the girls

Mike im so sorry to hear about your MIL here is plenty of what you asked for
and extra pixies for your wife i can understand how hard it is on her Major Pixies and hope you can turn Nurse cratchet around to see the light of pixie dust

Thank you for all of the hugs n pixie dust, I can feel the good Disney vibes flowing our way. I'll explain where things have gone below.

sorry to hear about all of this.

Thank you Dan, it'll all work out. We have moved forward and are thinking positive again now that we're past the turmoil of hearing the bad news.

Thinking about you and your family Mike, and hoping all is well...

Thank you - things are looking up!

So sorry to hear that.

I hope you get an explanation for the more than one assist person. That makes no sense from what you say about her.

Maybe someone made an error in paperwork or something

Hugs to you all

Thank you so much Sharky we got a real explanation as I will explain here.



Okay all, here's an update on things:

First, I did receive a call from the RN and found out the scoop on why she was denied. As we learned thru the process of being denied, they don't have an on-site RN. That put them at a very low tier for state licensing. They are mostly a retirement community with one wing of assisted care.

The two-person assist was total a complete mis-statement by the Director of the facility. The real reason was due to potential mental state. On certain days MiL has issues with memory and specifically gets fuzzy between dream and waking state. Thinking people were there who really weren't and so forth.

Their license does not allow them to have residents who have any cognative reasoning issues. End of story. I relayed our unhappiness with how things panned out and she listened and aplogized several times and said that they are fixing their process to make sure this never happens again.

Roxy and I came home and made dinner, then finally sat down with MiL. It had been sleepless nights and lots of anxiety leading up to this and were totally floored when she sat back, took a deep breath, and said "ok, which one was next on our list?" and that she didn't want to let this stop things. Basically she knew this was in God's hands and if she wasn't going to go to the first facility there must have been a reason and she would leave it to faith.

She wanted us to move on with the process the next day so Roxy called one facility and I called another, both basically ranked as our 'number 2' choices for different reasons. Roxy also called her brother and they decided to come up even though we weren't moving mom so they could visit. It has panned out pretty good as we have all been able to sit down and talk about the whole situation and were also able to schedule lunches and tours at both facilities. For clarity both of these facilities have on-staff RNs and higher licensure.

We visited one today and will visit the other tomorrow. Today's went well and it is the bigger/more opulent of the two. But although the staff was nice it had more of a feeling of a hotel than anything else. Just doesn't have a real homey and personal vibe. We hadn't been sure about this before but my bro-in-law's family echoed that sentiment this evening.

The second facility is smaller but has all of the same amenities as the first. And on our initial tour Roxy, MiL, and I all felt a more friendly/personal feeling from both the staff and residents. I am hopeful that we will all get that same feeling when we visit tomorrow. We have actually already done the paperwork process with this place and she has been approved. She could move in there as soon as Tuesday. And although it is a smaller facility, MiL would actually get a bigger room if she decided to live there.

So the bottom line is that things went a lot better than they could have and we think she will make a decision early this next week. Everything happens for a reason, we just have to be open for wherever MiL is meant to be.

Thank you very much everyone for your prayers and well-wishes, it has been very much appreciated and I truly believe that it helped to make our initial sit down with her go as well as it did. Hopefully my next update will include even better news about her being settled into her new home.

Some small Disney-related news - I composed my letters to the principals of both of the girl's schools as per the district policy for prolonged absences (you have to give 30 day written notice before the first day of the absence). I have already received a positive response from Bean's principal and have the read reciept that the other principal has read the letter. Only question now is how soon the girls will know something is going on as the principals will be talking to their teachers to talk about lesson plans while they are out.

We are still a couple of days out from starting the clues (actually didn't want to start them until after MiL was moved but we may have to change that depending on how long it will now take to move her). I'll keep you posted if one of the girls comes home asking questions

 

[Leger13]

Wow what wonderful news!!!! I'm so very glad God touched your MIL's heart and made her have faith for Him to guide her to the right place. Praying the next decision is an easy and quick one. And yay on getting the letters out to the principals! I can't believe we're all getting so close to our trips! It's so exciting!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Trentmom]

I am glad everything went well explaining it to your MIL

Sounds like 2nd place is a great fit for your MIL. Hope the tour goes well.



Will be curious to hear if the girls figure something is up soon with principals knowing now

Keep us posted

 

[PracPerfPatricia]

Hey Mike...

I'm glad to hear everyone is feeling brighter but I'm sorry that you still have to go through all of this stuff... not fun at all...

I hope Choice 2 works out for all of you...


Good luck with the Dis surprises/planning...

 

[disney67]

Mike that is so Magical that it went better then you thought and MIL was very willing to move on to the next option Cont and that you get this choice and it is a smooth transition fr your MIL and you guys can focus on surprising you angels . I cannot wait to hear on how the clues worked out ?

 

[mnmrmustard]

Wow what wonderful news!!!! I'm so very glad God touched your MIL's heart and made her have faith for Him to guide her to the right place. Praying the next decision is an easy and quick one. And yay on getting the letters out to the principals! I can't believe we're all getting so close to our trips! It's so exciting!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

Yes, wonderful indeed - it wa such a relief. There have still been some rough patches as we've continued to pack but all in all things are good.

Yes, the trip is coming up very quick

I am glad everything went well explaining it to your MIL

Sounds like 2nd place is a great fit for your MIL. Hope the tour goes well.



Will be curious to hear if the girls figure something is up soon with principals knowing now

Keep us posted

The 2nd place turned out to be the right fit - things are moving forward with it now. The whole family agreed that it was the best place.

I have news back from the principals already - update coming!

Hey Mike...

I'm glad to hear everyone is feeling brighter but I'm sorry that you still have to go through all of this stuff... not fun at all...

I hope Choice 2 works out for all of you...


Good luck with the Dis surprises/planning...

Hey Patricia, it has not been a fun experience but at least we're coming out of the bad part now. The suprises are still alive at this point - more to follow.

Mike that is so Magical that it went better then you thought and MIL was very willing to move on to the next option Cont and that you get this choice and it is a smooth transition fr your MIL and you guys can focus on surprising you angels . I cannot wait to hear on how the clues worked out ?

Thank you Jeff! Things have worked out pretty well with MiL and we still have our secret intact



To everyone, the second place worked out very well. She has her apartment assignment (delux studio on the second floor with a nice view of the courtyard) and they're putting in new laminate flooring and carpet today. The last of the touch-ups should be completed tomorrow and we'll start moving her in on Thursday. In the meantime we've been helping her go through stuff and pack it for the apartment or box it up for storage.

The staff there was so great when we visited on Sunday and the food was exceptional - very flavorful and prepared fresh. The director of the facility came in on his day off to give the tour and was very down to earth and answered all of our questions directly and honestly. And when he did our tour he knew every resident he passed by name and him and all of the staff were again very nice. Also he had great attention to detail - noticing a lightbulb out in a hallway and a door open that usually shouldn't be (a maintenance crew was in the room working).

We still don't like having to take this step and MiL is still very nervous about the move but it is still the best scenario we could have hoped for considering. Thank you again for all of the P&PD, it has really helped

I will be posting an honest-to-goodness update this evening on Disney stuff and will get this PTR back on track!

30 DAYS TO GO!!!!!!!!​

 

[mnmrmustard]

Hey All! We've had some family stuff going on which backburnered my Disney endeavors. If I haven't kept up with your PTRs apologies, I hope to make the rounds soon

However! I received a call from our travel agent today and low and behold, our WDW packet has arrived!!!

Luggage tags for the bags, airport tags to take them to POP, flight itinerary, and a bunch of discount vouchers. We're set for online check-in for flight and resort and we pick up our park tickets when we get to POP.

On the "surprise" side with the girls we are still keeping it a secret, although some nights it is VERY hard to not just blurt it out

We have principal approval from both schools and I've contacted all of their teachers via e-mail requesting that they keep it quiet until a week out. We figure the girls will have solved the puzzle by then

Speaking of the puzzle, we haven't started laying out the pieces yet. We will start by the end of this week. We'll put out 2 per day in random spots around the house until they solve it.

I'll give you updates as we go

We're 30 days out people - buckle up as we get through the last few weeks - Happy DIS'ing everyone!!!!​

 

[Trentmom]

So glad that the 2nd facility is a great fit and how nice for director to come in and give you personal tour. Sounds like going be great place for your mil

Glad both principals are good with it

yay for Disney Mail

Can't wait to hear how laying out the clues go