"One Step Ahead of the Slowpokes!"- A Dec '10/Jan '11 Trip Report! FINISHED 3/9 pg 38

[chunkymonkey]

I'm here and I am all caught up! Loving the TR so far, your Christmas morning looked like so much fun!! I love how everything is so traditional. And the gifts you got were awesome! I got the Toy Story 3 DVD too!

And I'm sooo happy you got the D&B crossbody bag. The perfect bag for the parks!

I can't wait to see how your drive down is going to be...I'm in anticipation of what's to come!!

 

[DisneyFirefly]

You got some really good gifts! I hope the snow wasn't too bad and didn't keep you guys from leaving on time

 

[stephielela]

That looks like a great Christmas morning! Congrats on the great stuff!

 

[jillianml]

I am so excited to read about your adventure!

 

[Tracy161]

Ahh! I hope the snow didn't slow you down! I can't imagine not having snow around Christmas time, but I'd love to know how that feels! I'm sick of snow already and where I live in New York, we've barely had any this year!

I'm so excited to read more!

 

[shelbys mommy]

I am here & all caught up! I love all the Christmas pics! You got some awesome gifts!!!! White Christmas! How lucky are you????

 

[saralexander97]

First off, LOVE THE D&B PURSE =) I'm really glad to see your totally Disney Christmas because I bought my daughter all Disney themed gifts. I was telling my coworkers about it and they laughed because I'm passing down the addiction. Disney is like crack, we are on when around and crave it when we are away from it to long. I have to watch a Disney princess movie once a week. I cannot wait to read more you have me captivated.

 

[laashley]

Here now and all caught up! What a great start. Such a lucky girl to get that D & B bag! Looks like you had a merry christmas and with the snow coming down and . Hope your drive wasn't postponed! For now I'll be on the edge of my seat waiting for an update!

 

[Reiana]

What a wonderful way to start a trip report. Love it.
Can't wait to read more.

 

[CW4DW]

I hope the snow doesn't delay your departure. What an awesome Christmas you and your family had ~ I love that!

 

[SOUTHERNtinkerBELLE]

It looks like you had an absolutely wonderful Christmas! Your family seems so sweet. And I love how everything was Disney-themed!

We had a white Christmas here, too! It was a complete surprise. I sure hope it didn't delay your trip, though!

 

[therussells08]

OMG I love the Peg figurine! She is so cute, she's one of those random Disney characters that I just love! Nana is adorable too!

Yay for your pin, that's amazing that your sister went through all that trouble to get that for you! I sometimes think about getting into collecting pins, but I just can't do it for some reason! I'm starting to collect snow globes and ornaments from my trips instead.

I can't believe you got your White Christmas you were hoping for, that's fantastic! You had such a great Christmas morning, and after all that, you still got to leave for your Disney trip, what a fun day!

I love Peg and Nana too! It always made me so sad in Peter Pan when the Darling children are flying away and Nana tries to fly with them by flapping her little ears.

I love pin collecting! I like I like it so much because they are all so different and unique, but since they're so small it's really easy to have a lot of them. I love snow globes and ornaments too, so I think those are great things to collect!

I couldn't believe the white Christmas either! It was so pretty!

Yay for getting a white Christmas! DW is a big fan of Eeyore too. He's probably her second favorite Disney character after Belle.

Eeyore is so adorable! I like Belle a lot too. Belle and Jasmine are my favorite princesses!

Glad to find out what was in that box. Sounds like you had a great Xmas and you got snow to top it all! We had a snowy Christmas and it has started to snow again today.

I know what you mean about the enjoyment that comes with younger ones opening gifts. I have a sister half my age and love her face when she opens presents!

Look forward to reading more...hopefully the snow doesn't affect your travel to the happiest place on earth!

TanzUnited99

I did have a great Christmas! We haven't had any snow since Christmas, but it looks like we are going to get some tomorrow!

Watching kids open gifts is the greatest! They get so excited. John is pretty much the same way when he opens gifts!

WOW, what a Disney Christmas! I hope to one day have a Disney Christmas too! I did get a Mickey and Minnie 2010 snowglobe (the mistletoe one), but I ended up returning it to the store. I think I'm going to use the money to get a t-shirt instead!

How do you guys do Christmas gifts? You all just get a bunch of gifts for each person? I think that's really fun. I meet with my extended family, and we get a gift from each family (so I'll get 3 actual gifts). I'm not that big of a fan because it's usually something that matches what the other girls get (ex. an aunt will find an item and just buy it for all the girl cousins). That means that there wasn't as much thought involved like the gifts you guys get!

I told Howard that I'm very excited for us to have our own Christmas (even if it's with my immediate family). Howard and I know each other. AND my mom gets us good gifts too! This past Christmas, she got both of us the fancy memory foam neck pillows because we'll need them for our Amtrak ride!

It was so cool getting so many Disney things for Christmas! I was able to take so much of it on my trip, which worked out perfectly!

Usually we do just buy a bunch of gifts for everyone because we keep things pretty much within my immediate family. My mom's side of the family is very small and my dad's side of the family lives in Pennsylvania, so Christmas is usually just between the five of us. We usually set a limit and spend right up to it, but I always stress out if I get one person more gifts than another, even if the gifts are less expensive so it evens out!

I am so excited for you and Howard to be married and have Christmas together! Even though we go to my parents' house Christmas Eve John and I still decorate our apartment and set up our Christmas tree and everything, and it's really nice to do all of those fun things with him! Those neck pillows sound like perfect gifts for you guys!

You definitely got some awesome Christmas presents! The D&B bag is adorable I've been looking at the totes for months now!

Yay for having a WHITE Christmas! That's so exciting!!

Thank you! I love my D&B bag! I don't want to carry it anytime other than when I'm on vacation though, because I don't want to mess it up!

 

[therussells08]

That is awesome that you had a white christmas!! I grew up in the Northeast with snow all the time so I always take for granted that some people have never experienced the white Christmas!!

It looks like you had an amazing Christmas! We actually got DBF's sister the same Ariel blanket this year I love to get people personalized gifts

A white Christmas was definitely a first for me! I loved it! I know that a lot of people from up north are used to it though! My aunt lives in Ohio and she came to stay with my cousin in Georgia for Christmas this year and she kept saying it didn't even feel like Christmas because there was no snow!

I love personalized gifts too! They are so special!

So, I've had that same Stephen King book your sister got for awhile and haven't gotten around to reading it yet. It is definitely a thick one!

I like Stephen King books but they are kind of difficult to get into. I don't think she's even cracked the cover yet!

I'm here and I am all caught up! Loving the TR so far, your Christmas morning looked like so much fun!! I love how everything is so traditional. And the gifts you got were awesome! I got the Toy Story 3 DVD too!

And I'm sooo happy you got the D&B crossbody bag. The perfect bag for the parks!

I can't wait to see how your drive down is going to be...I'm in anticipation of what's to come!!

Yay!

It really was the perfect bag for the parks! I didn't have to worry about losing it since it was a crossbody bag, and it held all of my essentials without being too heavy or bulky!

I will be posting an update later today about the drive down! Stay tuned!

You got some really good gifts! I hope the snow wasn't too bad and didn't keep you guys from leaving on time

Thank you! Stay tuned to find out if we had to delay our trip...

That looks like a great Christmas morning! Congrats on the great stuff!

Thanks!

 

[therussells08]

I am so excited to read about your adventure!

Thank you! I'm so excited to have you reading it!

Ahh! I hope the snow didn't slow you down! I can't imagine not having snow around Christmas time, but I'd love to know how that feels! I'm sick of snow already and where I live in New York, we've barely had any this year!

I'm so excited to read more!

I know what you mean. I love snow sometimes, but anytime that we get it more than once a winter I get SO sick of it! We don't get a lot of snow where I live, but I went to college in the mountains and we got it all the time. Ugh, I hated it!

I am here & all caught up! I love all the Christmas pics! You got some awesome gifts!!!! White Christmas! How lucky are you????

Thanks girl! It was a great Christmas!

First off, LOVE THE D&B PURSE =) I'm really glad to see your totally Disney Christmas because I bought my daughter all Disney themed gifts. I was telling my coworkers about it and they laughed because I'm passing down the addiction. Disney is like crack, we are on when around and crave it when we are away from it to long. I have to watch a Disney princess movie once a week. I cannot wait to read more you have me captivated.

Thank you! I bet your daughter loved her Disney Christmas! You are so right about Disney, too! Some people just don't get it!

Here now and all caught up! What a great start. Such a lucky girl to get that D & B bag! Looks like you had a merry christmas and with the snow coming down and . Hope your drive wasn't postponed! For now I'll be on the edge of my seat waiting for an update!

Thank you! I was very lucky this Christmas! I wasn't expecting that bag at all, and I definitely wasn't expecting snow!

I will be posting an update later today, so you won't have to wait too long!

 

[therussells08]

What a wonderful way to start a trip report. Love it.
Can't wait to read more.

Thank you! There will be an update very soon, I promise!

I hope the snow doesn't delay your departure. What an awesome Christmas you and your family had ~ I love that!

Thank you so much!

It looks like you had an absolutely wonderful Christmas! Your family seems so sweet. And I love how everything was Disney-themed!

We had a white Christmas here, too! It was a complete surprise. I sure hope it didn't delay your trip, though!

Thank you! My family is really great! I am very lucky to have them!

That's so awesome that you had a white Christmas too!

 

[therussells08]

Our original plan had been to hang out at my parents' house until 6 or 7-ish and then hit the road for Disney. We were going to drive until around midnight, stop for the night, and finish the drive the next morning. However, by 2 o'clock there was already several inches of snow on the ground and it was starting to stick to the road pretty good too. This left us with two choices: leave for Disney early and get out of the snow before it got much worse, or wait around and leave the next day. However, the forecast was calling for 6 to 7 inches of snow, so waiting around would probably have meant leaving in three or four days, not the next morning. Therefore, John and I decided to leave earlier than planned. We hung out for a little while, packing all of the new stuff we got for Christmas into our luggage, and eating some leftover Christmas feast. We have our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, and I refused to leave without having one more helping of my mom's ham and my dad's delicious spicy cheeseball.

John took a quick nap so he would be good to drive and I sat around anxiously. It was a conundrum, because I was eager to leave for Disney, but I was dragging my feet because I was sad to leave my family on Christmas. I have traveled around Christmas a few times, and it's always hard. One year when John was stationed in Alaska I went to visit him the day after Christmas. As much as I wanted to see him, I almost didn't go because I am such a homebody at Christmas and I just couldn't stand leaving my family. I ended up going and of course I was glad I did, but saying goodbye was hard.

Speaking of goodbyes, it was finally that time. I was dreading saying goodbye to my dogs because I haven't spent more than one night away from them in over a year. However, I felt pretty good about it because I wasn't leaving them at a kennel. They stay with my mom during the day while I'm working all week, so they are completely used to being at my parents' house. It's like a second home to them, so I knew they would be happy. I was feeling sorry for myself, not Bella and Vida, because I'm so used to being with them every night. I decided to treat it like ripping off a bandaid, so I gave them a quick hug and kiss and didn't drag things out. My family saw us off and we hit the road at exactly 3:55pm.

I tried to take a picture of the time in the car, but my camera refused to cooperate so I settled for a picture of the snow instead. Sorry about the windshield wipers, but you can see the snow starting to stick to the road pretty good. We got out of there just in time!

Right after logging our departure time into my trip journal I got out my GPS and set it up. John knows exactly how to get to Disney (which he reminded me of grumpily several times as I set the GPS up) but I wanted to have it going the whole trip so I could see our arrival time. I get this weird joy from shaving a minute or two off of our estimated arrival time when we travel, and it was going to take more than John's surliness to deny me this pleasure! The voice on my GPS is set to an Australian man, and his name is Lee. So when I say "Lee said blah blah blah" or something like that during this TR please don't think we had an extra passenger I forgot to mention! Lee said our estimated arrival time was 1:30am. That was way earlier than I expected! I immediately couldn't help but think, "Hmm...should we go all the way tonight?" I didn't say anything to John just yet, but the seed was definitely planted...

After setting Lee up I immediately settled in and got comfortable for the long car ride. I have a 2010 Honda CR-V, so it's nice a roomy. I hate traveling in small cars, I just get so restless! One of the gifts I had gotten for Christmas that came along on the trip was an amazingly soft blanket from Bath and Body Works. I curled up in my blanket and looked through my travel bag for something to keep me busy. Before we even reached the highway I realized the first thing I had forgotten. I forgot to bring my Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World book by Susan Veness! I had been wanting to look for all of the secret stuff she talks about during our trip, but I totally forgot it. John asked me if I wanted to go back since we were only ten minutes or so from our apartment, but I said no. I didn't want to lose any time with the snow coming down the way it was.

Another thing that happened before we even reached the highway was my mom called twice. She is so sweet and she worries like any mom, so she wanted to tell us a few more times to be careful and call her as soon as we were out of the snow.

When we reached I-77 South I decided to watch an episode of True Blood Season 2 on my new portable DVD player. John and I had agreed not to get each other Christmas gifts since we were going to Disney, but we did buy each other an "I love you" gift before Christmas, and mine was True Blood. I had already seen season 1 thanks to Netflix (that was before my sister got it for me for Christmas), but all of season 2 was new to me except the first few episodes. If any of you watch True Blood, you know why I was immediately drawn into the crazy fantasy world of Sookie and Bill and lost all track of time. When I finished the episode I looked up and realized that we were completely out of the snow! Of course, I called my mom and let her know.

We got to Charlotte, NC at about 5:30. I am not a big fan of Charlotte at all, so I was eager to get through it. It was starting to get dark at this point, and I realized for the first time that when it gets dark outside the GPS turns to nighttime too! Haha, who knew?

Anyway, as we were driving through Charlotte I was surprised by the number of cars on the road. I had expected the roads to be dead on Christmas, but there was a pretty decent amount of traffic. We passed Carowinds, which is the amusement park that is closest to our home. I don't like Carowinds at all, and I blame it for my ill feelings towards amusement parks before I discovered Disney. I feel like Carowinds is pretty much the complete opposite of Disney. Everytime I've ever been it's dirty, the lines are ridiculously long, and I feel like I'm melting under the hot sun on all of the black asphalt. I have fainted several times at Carowinds because of the heat, but oddly enough I have never fainted from heat at Disney World, which is in FLORIDA. Carowinds has no way of managing crowds or controlling the heat like Disney does, so going there is pretty much misery, but I digress.

I started seeing signs for fireworks stores, which told me we were getting close to SC because fireworks that go up into the air are illegal in NC. Sure enough, we got to SC at 5:42pm. After seeing that we were in SC I settled in with another episode of True Blood.

We stopped at about 6:20 at a gas station in SC. We used the restroom, filled the car up, and bought a few things for the road. I was still battling the head cold I had been dealing with all week, so I picked up a single packet of Nyquil for later. We got some sodas and John got a snack and we headed back to the car. I took a few pictures of the gas station before we left!

We got on I-26 East at 7:05pm, right as I was finishing up my second episode of True Blood. I tried to take a picture of the sign once and it didn't work out, but it looked so cool I decided to keep it.

When I tried the second time it worked a little better.

We weren't on I-26 very long. At about 7:45pm we got on I-95. I didn't get a picture of the sign because, you guessed it: I was totally immersed in True Blood!

We stopped again at 8:10pm to use the bathroom. By now I had finished up my third episode and was ready to stretch my legs. This gas station wasn't as inviting as the first, so we hurried up and hit the road.

As we were leaving the gas station John asked me to remind him to send a thank you letter to my best friend, Jessy, for buying me the portable DVD player for Christmas. I can admit it, usually I am a nightmare to travel with. I get bored and restless so easily, and I can get pretty whiny and annoying. So far on this trip I had been completely quiet thanks to my portable DVD player and vampire drama. John was so relieved!

We left SC and went into GA at 9:05pm. We were making pretty good time, and Lee's ETA still hovered around 1:30am. We stopped again at 9:30-ish, and I took one more picture of a gas station. I was getting pretty bored with that by this point, so it's the last you'll see before we head home, I promise!

I watched more True Blood after this, and before I knew it, it was 10:41pm and we were in Florida! I was so excited, but now we had to decide what we were going to do about stopping for the night. John really didn't want to stay in Jacksonville, so we decided to keep driving for awhile.

At about 11:15pm John started to lose it a little bit. He was acting so silly because he was ready to get out of the car and he had me cracking up. But my head cold was starting to get the best of me and I was feeling pretty bad. We stopped again at a gas station at 11:45 and I wrote in my trip journal that I was feeling "totally crappy". We were pretty hungry by this point, but since it was Christmas there were no fast food restaurants open.

This was about the moment when John and I started discussing the possibility of going all the way to Disney tonight. We weren't thrilled about the idea of stopping somewhere for just one night and having to repack all of our stuff in the morning just to drive an hour or so. However, our reservations weren't until the 26th! I decided to call Disney and see if they had anything open at POP. It turned out that they did, but they said it would not be the king room we requested. Therefore, we would probably have to switch rooms the next day if we wanted a king room. I told them we would think it over and call them back.

At 12:30am we got on I-4. We were both exhausted and sick of being in the car. I had watched five episodes of True Blood at this time and I was sick of it. We had to make a decision: keep going until we got to Disney, or stop somewhere nearby and finish the drive in the morning.

What to do? What to do?!

Up Next: What did we end up deciding? Stay tuned to find out!

 

[stephielela]

Ooooh that is a dilemma! Can't wait to see what you decided!

 

[Nermel9]

Love the update!!!

I just got a GPS for Christmas, which I haven't even used yet, but I can't wait to hear it's voice options! I'll probably end up giving it a name too. I always used Brandon's for trips that we knew where we were going just to see the arrival time, I love losing 3 or 4 minutes here and there!

I'm so jealous you have a Honda CR-V, I want one of those! I have a 2008 Honda Civic, which I love, but when I bought the car a couple of years ago, my dad tried talking me into buying a CR-V and I said no, and now I kind of regret it!

Ugh that Carowinds place sounds awful! I don't know how I'm going to feel about a different amusement park after being so used to Disney, I really want to get to Six Flags this summer, but I think it's going to be a little boring! Well, except for Kingda Ka (or however you spell it!)

I really have to get a portable DVD player, even on 2 and half hour plane trips I get SO bored! And I have to get the True Blood seasons too, I love Season 1! Season 2 is ok, but I'm not a fan of Mary Ann...and I don't like how Eric had to cut his hair off!

Can't wait to see what you guys decided to do! I'm guessing you went with an extra night at Pop!

 

[Cat0727]

I'm here and all caught up!

I love True Blood. I don't have any of the seasons yet, but they are definitely on my wishlist! I've started reading the books, and they are pretty good.

I wonder what you guys decided? I bet you kept on goin to Pop!

 

[TinkerbellLuvr7]

great update!!

I can't believe you are going to leave us hanging! At least you got out of the snow! Ours right now is melting but I guess we are supposed to get hit tomorrow night-Tues with more snow and multiple inches I'd rather be in FL, even if it is 50 degrees!!!