Our annual Christmas trip that almost did not happen!

[heatherbabydoll1]

I am on the DIS boards everyday viewing everyone's reports. It helps to get me excited and keep motivated. So I thought it was time for me to share our report.

First, let me introduce you to my family.

Me, Heather 32
I live in Louisa, KY. I grew up just down the street from WDW in Altamonte Springs, FL. I sung in Candlight during high school and visited Disney World for the first time in my life in 5th grade.

Me and my brother; Patrick on our first visit to WDW in the 80's.

This is me and my son Joeseph last year at the Poly.

My husband Charlie is 40 and a big kid at heart! He currently works for Pathways here in Louisa, KY. He is my best friend as well as my husband of 11 years. He has become a Disney lover just like me.

This is Charlie and our pug; Angel this Thanksgiving 2010.

Then there is my wonderful son Joeseph! I homeschool him and we both love it. He loves Stitch, soccer, cooking, and the Lord! Disney World has become his favorite place to go! When we thought we could not go this year he was sad but said, " As long as we are togeather, that is all I want for Christmas"! My husband and I count our blessings everyday for such a wonderful child!

We can't forget our furry children that are going to have to stay home.

From left to right: First, our 11 month old pug; Angel (we had a pug puppy named Stitch but he died last Christmas Eve when we where at Disney), 2nd is Pumpkin she is a 5 year old, red dapple female dachshund, 3rd is Eeyore; our 6 year old red male dachshund, and last Cookie, my 6 year old silver dapple dachshund. We miss them everytime we are gone but their Aunt Cindy and cousins take real good care of them, along with our turtle; Scar and our fish; all named after Beauty and the Beast characters.

Now that you know our family, I would like to give you a little history next post:

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

Here is a short version of our Disney history:

Like I said before I first visited WDW when I was in the 5th grade. Then I went back a couple of times in high school using the park tickets I earned singing in candlelight. After high school I moved to Charleston, SC. Started college and dropped out after about a year, had a baby and got married. In April 1999 my husband and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon. We stayed with family and was signed in by a family friend. That was the first time my husband had ever gone to WDW. We only visited the magic kingdom and Epcot that day and he was overwhelmed. For years we traveled home to Florida to visit family and from time to time we got signed in for a day here or there to visit.
Here was Joeseph's very first trip:

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

After many visits to Disney World for a day here and there, we wanted to stay longer. So in 2006 we scrimped and saved for our first vacation by ourselves to WDW. Because at the time my husband was a school bus driver and I was a sub-teacher we decided to go around Christmas. We decided to stay at the French Quarter and had a great time. We had such a great time that we decided we wanted to do it again. Can't find pictures of that year right now because I did not have this computer at that time. The best part was that we got free dining. We had never bought anything but burgers in our previous trips and boy were we floored. We went to Alfredos, Crystal palace, Hoop De Doo, 1900 Park Fare, Chef Mickeys, and Donald Duck breakfastsaurce. We knew the dining plan was a must after comparing what our meals would have been if we did not have the plan.

In 2007 we came with my best friends and their friends. They stayed over at the All Stars but we stayed at french quarter again with the free dining plan. This was the last year they had the appitizers and grutity included. Side note; I started back to college this year!

This is me and my two best friends; Shonda and Valerie!

This was the whole gang:

This is all our kids:

Here is my family in 2007:

2008 next post:

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

So in 2008 we decided to upgrade because we where going to go earlier in December. The prices were better. So we stayed at AKL pool view and upgraded to deluxe dining. Half way through the trip my mother and her husband Rhett joined us. I posted all the food we ate. The only bummer was we had to come up with our tips this year. AKL was beautiful and we loved staying there. We got to try alot of new places to eat and loved every minute.

2008:
This was our view from our room

This was my first year I went to Califonia Grill, was always a dream of mine:

My son has always loved to cook but after meeting Kevin at Ragland Road (he is like the Paula Deen of Irland, that writes the menu at RR) he wants to be a chef more than anything! In fact this Thanksgiving 2010 he cooked the whole meal by himself, I will post pics later of that.

My mother and Rhett at 1900 Park Fare:

My father and his wife Beverly came to spend the day at Downtown Disney with us, they live near by in Apopka, FL:
sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-ash1/v648/248/43/1335878204/n1335878204_30204699_3957.jpg

next post 2009:

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

2009 was a huge year for us. We moved to Kentucky, saw snow for the first time, and got to go with my husband's sister Cindy and her kids. This would have been Joeseph's first time on the adult menu with deluxe dining, but because we wanted them to come with us we downgraded.

Joeseph and his cousins, Katelynn, Billy, and Tristin.

The coolest thing that happened is that my husband repurposed to me in front of the castle exactly 6 months after our 10 year anniversery.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs258.ash1/18535_1321246074654_1335878204_30885096_6169510_n.jpg
[IMG]http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs158.snc3/18535_1321246634668_1335878204_30885110_6204239_n.jpg
Next post, why we thought we where not going to get to go this year:

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

Now that I have introduced our family and gave you a little back ground, let me tell you why we never thought we where going anywhere this year.

Shortly after we got back my husband's job started cutting hours, so he decided to go to truck driving school. The good news was he got his class A CDL. Bad news is he can't get hired anywhere. Then in April he lost his job. At the begining of the year I got a good deal on Discovery Cove tickets and bought them and put a deposit on Disney. Well by June I had to cancle Disney and get the money back because there was no way we could afford to stay there from Dec. 12 - 27. We where crushed. I kept the Discovery Cove just in case we could travel and stay at my dad's, maybe we could at least go there. All our savings was gone and we where borrowing money just to survive.

We knew that our hopes of our 5th year at Disney where gone.

Then God answered prayers and Charlie got a job here in town working with Special Ed and I got a great job sub-teaching at the Christian school. We not only have gotten back on our feet, but we put some emergency money up and paid off our debtors. We have been working real hard and my DH asked me is there any way we can afford a trip, even if we have very little spending money. So I started playing with numbers.

Thanks to free dinning and shorting our trip, we are going to be able to go and have deluxe dinning.

I started budgeting and found plane tickets less than it would cost for gas.
So we are now going to be in Florida from Dec. 15 - 27. We will only be at disney till the 22nd but we will be staying with my dad for the rest of the trip.

We choose to do deluxe dinning for two reasons; first, we promised our son he would get to be on the adult menu with deluxe dinning this year, and second the snacks and the refillable mugs will be our souviners.

We are reusing our Disney T-shirts I made in the past and we still had some pins to trade from last year.

So right at 45 days we where able to book a trip and pay it. Not only that, but a lot of our resturants I wanted where still available. Now some might be real late or real early, but we are getting to go to all of these places:

Maracco(never have gone yet)
Lecellier
Tusker House
Citrocos(never gone)
Teppan Edo(never gone)
Kona
Chef Mickey's
Wispering Canyon
1900 Park Fare
France
Hoop De doo
Brown Derby
Crystal Palace
Califonia Grill
Tony's (never gone)

Currently we are trying to get money together for gratitudes, cab fares, mousekeeping, ect. We decided to just buy Christmas for our family and friends and our trip is our Christmas presents. My son's birthday is on December 21 and we have three unused tickets to IOA so that we can take him to Harry Potter World.

We love Disney and we were heart broken when we thought we were not going to get to go this year, but let me share what we learned.

First, as a family we grew togeather. We all worked togeather to stretch gas, money, food, what ever it took. We went back to church and started everyday to pray together. We at one point had very little money in the bank and no idea where rent was coming from the next month. Through are prayers and hard work God has blessed our family with our needs. Now He has made a way for us not only to go home to Florida this year for Christmas, but also for us to spend a little time at WDW.

We are so greatful and are looking forward to this trip more than we have ever before! For four years our trip financially came semi-easily and we took it for granted. This year we may have next to no spending money and we are looking forward to this trip soooo much.

This year my son excepted Jesus and was baptized, my husband and I both got jobs we both love a lot, and I finished my degree and graduated Nov. 20th.
We have so much to be thankful for. I can't wait to share our Trip Report when we get back. We will have enough for gratuities, mousekeeping, ect, but not a whole lot of spending. So I hope to be able to show how much of a good time you can have with very little money on you.

This year we went to not being able to go at all to being able to go and even go by plane. My DH and son have never been in a plane!

Here is some pictures of us this year:

My brother and his family got to travel over from Germany, He is the commander of a base over there. My mother and her husband are traveling over to Germany for Christmas. I miss them so much! Please remember our military and their families over the holidays!

This is when my son got baptized:

This was how I spent my morning I graduated. The school I teach at had a breakfast with a Santa fundraiser, I cooked! It was a lot of fun:

Then Thanksgiving my son wanted to cook the whole meal himself and he did and it was great!:

Thanks for letting me share my Pre-trip, next what we have done to get ready for the trip.

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

First, saying our prayers!
Second, on the previous posts you can see I made shirt thanks to the Dis-designers. Well they are all in pretty good shape, so any that don't have a year on them we are reuseing.

Next, because I have a Pooh size family, flying has always been a fear of mine. Only because I was afraid of being charged for two seats, ect. So in May I took a real cheap flight on Alligent to Myrtle Beach to go take an exam at my old college. I asked for a belt extension and checked out the spacing. So I noticed after I put on the extention there was plenty of room still left for my husband. Then I figure if the three of us sit in one seat we should be fine. Maybe a little tight but hopefully we will all be fine.

I have been saving pennies and quarters for months for laundry and smooshed pennies.

Any left over money from paying bills or buying things has gone into envelops.
I take a coupon divider and put envelopes labled for mousekeeping and all our resturants, ect. and put the money in these envelopes.

I keep a check off list and when I earn something and seal the envelope I highlight it.

We made our thank you cards for cast members with some left over card stock and ink we still have.

We skipped going shopping on black Friday except for the pre paid phones at Wal mart. When my husband lost his job we turned off our cell phones after paying the last bill. We got a prepaid phone which cut our costs down greatly. This gave my husband and I new phones with cameras and for my son's birthday present we are giving him his dad's old one.(we told him he had to be 13 to have a cell phone, so getting one a year early will be huge)

I read the Dis board daily! I was able to find out that there was some fantasmic shows added to the days we will be there. I am trying my best to see if I can get a fantasmic package but so far no luck. Don't know if they are all booked or if they just haven't added the packages on yet.

Now I am setting out my suitcases in the extra room and starting to pack.

Any other ideas or tips that people can share would be great!

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

We finally got our vouchers in. We were told that our Magical Express would come in after our vouchers. Well the Magical Express came in the first week of November and I finally got the other stuff today. Thank goodness! Now that all our paperwork is in I guess it is time to pack and get the house ready including extra food for the puppies who have to stay home.

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

Today, I need to finish up christmas cards and pack up the Disney T-shirts.

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

Today I sent out all Christmas cards and packages. I went to work yesterday and the house was clean when I got home. Now I need to finish up my packing lists and double check my ADR's.

Any tips on saving money I would love to hear them!

 

[heatherbabydoll1]

It's been snowing. I am nervous that our plane might get delayed. This will be our first time flying toDisney and my husband and son's first time ever flying!
So much to do so little time!