Jedi Mickey here we come! Are we crazy?? (Part 2 - 5/4 w/ pics)

[lbwalsh101]

Part 1: The pre-planning
Well.... this is my first time ever attempting something of this nature. I think I have alot to live up to with zzub & Lala's trip reports! So just bear with me!
Here are the players:
ME! 31, we can call me "princess", a technology director for our local school district, mother of 2 and general do everything gal! Oh... also resident family "travel agent"
DH 32, we can call him "sand paper hands" maintenance guy for a local oil refinery, avid golfer...
DS1 5 years old, we can call him "Luke" LOVER of Star Wars, and excited to attend Kindergarten next year in his "mommy's school!"
DS2, almost 9 months old, we can call him "yoda", since that is what his older brother made him be for Halloween!

We have come a long way with this vacation! Every stinking year our family... actually Sand Paper Hands' family (approximately 20 give or take a few!) migrate to Siesta Key's Florida for a week. We stay at the same condo and do the same things every year. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the beach but after a day of doing nothing but sitting around and watching the waves break on the beach I crave a little something more.... a little something Disney! So I put my foot down and stated that I wanted to skip Siesta Keys this year! Well, everyone was shocked, outraged, and well.... unpleased! So to appease the masses I looked into different vacation spots (myrtle beach, captiva island, just to name a few) Eventually the inlaws shot down each and every idea. (they had a reason why not to for every location! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE them dearly and we do almost everything together....but they FEAR change! )

Well... I was talking with my mother one day. She has always wanted to take a family vacation with us (and gets a little jealous of the in-laws I think) and she loves Disney as much as I do! (they spent their honeymoon at Disney back in the early 1970'3 and we took 1 Disney vacation as a family... that vacation was mom's dream!) So we cooked up the idea of vacationing together at Disney this year! Mom was a little hesitant becuase she wasn't sure if Dad would buy into the Disney idea especially with our young kids! Then one night while lying in bed I had a BRILLIANT idea! Why not let the guys golf! Yes, I said "let" the guys golf! Now come on... I am the woman of the house... I wear the pants... and generally have the say in what goes on! So about 4 months ago while sitting around I "pitched" my golf idea.... the guys LOVED it! So we set down some inital ground rules....
1. golfing will only occur during the "morning" hours...
2. All men are to report to their designated park by no later than 12:30pm each day.
3. There will be no downing of too many alcoholic beverages while golfing (since this is a "family" vacation.)

so after a little moaning and such they both agreed. My dad's only request was that I figure out their "arrangements" and tell him were to send the checks....

So after much deliberation... do we stay at the All Stars?.. do we stay at POR?... what do we do???? I decided to go for the gusto and attempt to rent DVC points and stay at OKW! Our dates were June 9-16th!
So here are the now added players!
"Nanny" 54 - babysits our kids, sells Tupperware, and is "perfect"
"Grandpa Red" 53 - avid golfer, and also works for a local oil refinery...

Then the in-laws threw in the monkey wrench! My SIL called me to say that the entire family had once again decided they were going back to Siesta Keys... and I had to say NOPE, NO THANK YOU, you just can't talk me into it! I stood me ground... She even tried to lay on the guilt trip "who is going to set everything up?" "but things just won't be the same without all of you!" "who is going to share a rental car with dad?" "Who is going to drive the car from the airport so no one gets lost?" 'but the kids will miss Luke!" "but won't Sand Paper Hands miss playing bean bags on the beach?" "would you really deprive your children of this enormous family vacation... would I really be that bad of a parent????" (ok she didn't say that one...)
But you should all be very proud of me... I did not cave! NOPE! I was having my own family vacation this year!!!
stay tuned for Part 2! Who else will be joining "my family" vacation???

 

[Halloweenqueen]

Sounds like quite a group!

We are there from the 9-18! Maybe we will bump into each other!

 

[lbwalsh101]

Part 2: Who else is joining “my family” vacation???

My SIL called me a few nights later and told us that her family had decided to go for broke and was also going to WDW, but they were headed down June 6th and they were leaving June 9th for Siesta Keys. She had already booked their rooms at ASMo, and had also signed up for the DDP. They were all very excited, but what were we going to do since our dates were not going to coincide??
So I hung up the phone and talked to Sand Paper Hands….

Princess: “Your sister is going to WDW now!”
SPH: huh?
Princess: “Your sister is going to WDW now!”
SPH: huh? So?
Princess: “They are now going to WDW! But they are going before us.”
SPH: “When?”
Princess: “June 6th-9th”
SPH: “When are we going? July??”
Princess: “For the love of god Sand Paper Hands! We are going June 9-16th… did you even put in for vacation at work yet???”
SPH: “Nope… why don’t we change our dates and go earlier then?”
Princess: “Really?”
SPH: “Yep, since I haven’t put in for work yet…”

Well Sand Paper Hands procrastinating actually paid off for once! We decided on June7th-June14th…. This way SIL’s family could have some time to themselves as a ”family unit.” But wait! What were we thinking??? Nanny & Grandpa Red are planning on June 9th-16th!!! What are we going to do? Sand Paper Hands quickly piped in that I should just call Nanny and ask her if we could change dates… after all Grandpa Red has been working out their for over 30 years and should be able to take/switch vacation for whenever he wants no problem!

So I called and Nanny who said the date change was no problem. They were talking and actually would like to change their dates so they are only at Disney for 5 days anyway. They think that 7 days with us would be too much… (What! 7 days with us too much??? You have to be kidding me! You mean a 5 year old and a 10 month old would get annoying after 7 days at WDW!!!)

So once again plans are changing, but that is all right. They don’t call me the “travel agent” for nothing!

So our group has now added the following cast of characters:
SIL - "Shell" preschool teacher & my BFF!
BIL - "Leonardo" an occupational therapist who LOVES his kids and is a blast to be around...
Neice1 - "Gymnastics Girl" in 4th grade and loves gymnastics!
Neice2 - "cool girl" is in 1st grade and only likes "cool" things.
Neice3 - "cindabelly" age 3 - she is in LOVE with Cinderella and fondly refers to her as "cindabelly!" She has a mind of her own and a will of steel! (Luke has the black eyes to prove it!)

So now that dates are set in stone I decided to “officially” book our DVC reservations and start looking for airfare. Nanny & Grandpa Red informed us that they are driving. Good! 2 less airplane tickets to look for! After a couple of weeks of searching I realize that Southwest is the cheapest and book before it goes up again. Granted we will have to brave the “cattle call” to get on the plane, and Yoda will have to sit on our laps, but we are going to try! (I am very nervous about Yoda… he is a little antsy and likes to get down and crawl A LOT! It is one thing to have him strapped in a stroller, but completely different to hold him for a 3 hour flight!) We will see what happens! Granted I could always “Pay” for a seat and strap and him into a car seat. But are you crazy! “Pay” for a kid under 2 when you don’t have to! Heck that money could pay for another night’s stay at WDW! So I guess we will brave it and probably tick off a lot of people on our flight!

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, we even made it through a small crisis when Sand Paper hands came home to tell me that he was going to have to go to Texas for 3 months. I wasn’t too worried until the dates that he spouted off were smack dab in the middle of vacation! WHAT! You are going where for how long????/ AGGHH!!!! No No No No No! You will have to go back to work tomorrow and tell them no! I have plane tickets booked in YOUR NAME! You are committed now pal! You have to go! What??? You might not be able to say no??? I am going to call Grandpa Red!

Now, as you have read previously Grandpa Red & Sand Paper Hands work at the same place. But Grandpa Red is upper management and tends to have quite a bit of pull over certain things. (Thank god!) So I call Nanny and tell her the situation, and she relays it on to Grandpa Red (who won’t talk on the phone….ever) She comes back and tells me not to worry everything will be all right. Sigh… relief….vacation has been saved! Grandpa Red is saving the day. But Sand Paper Hands isn’t all that happy. I guess he wanted to take this opportunity to experience a different refinery and see how they do things… So I start making my case…
1. You will miss Yoda taking his 1st steps!
2. You will miss Yoda’s 1st birthday!
3. You will miss Luke’s 1st T-Ball season (the WHOLE thing!)
4. How am I going to manage by myself for over 3 months!
5. Texas…really? Isn’t it going to be HOT there during that time??
6. What if someone is sick?
7. What if something bad happens?
8. Just think of all the things you will miss out on with the boys!
9. What if you find a nice Texas Cowgirl and decided to leave us all forever! (No offense to you Texans!)

Sand Paper Hands finally sees the light and admits that it was a poor decision and he doesn’t want to miss all of those “1sts” and says he is sorry that he even considered it.
I know, I know… I sound horrible! I sound like a controlling, manipulative wife! But really… if he doesn’t HAVE to go away for 3 months why should he? If it was during the school year, things might be a little different. But most of you can remember all of the “changes” that an infant experiences that 1st year! I didn’t want him to do something that he would regret at a later date. Since I am a school teacher our summers are our “family” time!

Oh….. I just realized that I should probably give you a little history on my own family (Nanny & Grandpa Red.) Some of the weird or unusual things that happen in my family are usually explained with one life changing event from our past. Almost 9 years ago my younger sister (19) was away at college. My husband and I had only been married for 3 months when I got a call at 6:30 am. “Your sister has meningitis, they are transferring her to a different hospital”…I can tell you that I was stunned, speechless actually. I honestly had no idea what meningitis was, so I waited by the phone. My mother called me several hours later and informed me that my sister was unconscious and the doctors were somewhat optimistic, but she had been diagnosed with bacterial meningitis (which is QUITE serious.) But I needed to gather all of the grandparents and get them to doctors for preventative treatment since my sister had been home visiting just a few days earlier. So I took on the daunting task of trying to calm my grandparents and get them to doctors without alarming them to the seriousness of my sister’s condition. (We didn’t need anyone else in the hospital!) So I did just that. I spent my day keeping myself busy tracking down everyone she had come in contact with and talking to local doctors and giving them medication recommendations, which the health department had given us. In the mean time I was also fending off phone calls from nervous friends who were seeing this all of this unfold on the news!!!! Yep, your right, my sister had made the national news! This all happened the week before spring break at her university, so they had no choice but to make this news public in the hopes of tracking down any of her classmates who had left the country, or were on spring break already. Finally my mother called back and told me that the antibiotics were helping and she had become lucid and finally recognized Nanny & Grandpa Red. The doctors had told her it was an amazing event, and that she had made it through the worst, and had instructed the family to go get something to eat and let her rest for awhile. …. Now I had been begging them to let me come to the hospital all day long, but Nanny told me that I had to stay home and take care of the grandparents and everything, and that things would be all right. My sister had been in the hospital before, she had a heart condition a few years earlier and had a pacemaker implanted. So we were somewhat used to medical issues regarding my sister. (I fondly called her the Bionic Woman!) So I ended the conversation with Nanny by telling her to call me if anything changed, and that I would be driving down bright and early the next day no matter WHAT she said! Approximately an hour later the phone rang…. I looked at Sand Paper Hands and said “Oh no…. something is wrong.” I picked up the phone and was told, “She just coded, and they are trying to bring her back. Call your Aunt, and Grandparents…. Get them all her NOW!” I simply fell to my knees and starting crying, I couldn’t move! All I could think about was that I was not there right then at that moment with my sister! I needed to get there. Sand Paper Hands somehow managed to get me up and snapped me back into reality, and reminded me that we needed to get everyone rounded up…. 15 minutes later we were on the road. (A 2 hour drive away!) We drove as fast as we could… by the time we got there, they had brought her back but she was unconscious and the doctors were informing us that because of the length of time she had been down they believed she was brain dead. We waited for 12 agonizing hours while they tested and retested before they confirmed that in fact she was brain dead. As a family we then decided that we would donate her organs. Then there was nothing to do but go home… because of the organ donation she was still hooked up to breathing machines and such… it just didn’t feel right leaving her there looking like that. Tell this day the image of her still breathing haunts me. Things after that are somewhat of a blur. My parents were really in no condition to take care of arrangements. We had to sedate my mother…. So I stepped in and made most of the phone calls to relatives giving them the bad news, and finalized funeral arrangements, picked out flowers, etc. My mother has not been the same ever since, and honestly I can’t blame her. The sparkle has left her eyes, and sometimes I believe that she obsesses to a degree over the events that happened. The family started a foundation in her name, which promotes vaccinations from college age students, and mom is also involved in a MOMS group, which the pharmaceutical company started. This group is a group of moms who have all lost their children to this horrible disease. Actually that is what Nanny is doing at this very moment! She is Orlando for a convention, which she will speak at on behalf of the moms group.

Now that I have brought everyone down, I apologize for rambling on so long. I thought a little background info would help you to understand my families “quirks.” This essentially is why I want to make this Disney vacation special for my parents. They need a break, a little down time! Some quality fun time with their grandkids! And for Grandpa Red, a little golf and relaxation! The only time we see my mother truly happy again is when she is with her Grandchildren. Without them I honestly don’t think she would be here with us.

Countdown to Disney…..33 days!

Stay tuned for Part 3: And the roll call keeps growing!

 

[lbwalsh101]

Sounds like quite a group!

We are there from the 9-18! Maybe we will bump into each other!

Hey maybe we will! Just look for the crazy 5 year old with Obi Wan's constume on!

 

[lbwalsh101]

Here are a few picks from our previous WDW trips.... just to give you an idea of what the family looks like!

The neices & my oldest son (Luke)

yep.... that's me in the red mickey shirt holding Luke... sorry.. I am ashamed to show my face!

and we can't forget Yoda!!!!