Cast of Characters:
Me: 55 JoDeen, mom, Disney nut, only one of us to still have an AP
DH: 56 David, dad, loves actually getting time to relax on vacation more than anything else...which he certainly will do this time because his Achilles tendon was severed at work a month ago and he's now in his second cast.
DS17: Joe, graduating this spring, leaving for college this fall, interested in "writing" (which drives mom crazy, seeing "starving artist" painted all over his future)
DD15: Elise, older by 9 minutes than her identical twin, jazz musician extrordinaire (sax, what else?), grounded child, good student, good athlete, good voice, in show choir, community theatre yadayadayada...
DD15: Valerie, our baby lol, same as Elise except she plays the French horn so she's not in jazz band...
DD30: Lynnette, lives in Stuart, Florida (yes, the same Stuart, Florida where 2 hurricanes made landfall within weeks of each other last fall).
DDF30: Steve, friend of Lynnette, lives in California, moving to Texas, coming for a radioligist's conference in Orlando March 11-16.
I think that's all the players...
Before you get the wrong impression I must add, Elise and Val are really very individual, but they do like the same things for the most part. Oh, and they DO NOT dress alike except when they think it's a hoot to do so. We are awaiting word as to whether or not one, both or neither will be accepted into the Congress-Bundestag Exchange Program. If accepted the student leaves in the middle of July for a year in Germany with a host family (Lynnette did this her Junior year in high school). I mention this because if they go this will probably be the last Disney vacation ever the 5 of us take in this mode anyway.
As it is, the last time the 5 of us were in the parks together was...wow, 2001? The kids saw the preview of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", but have never actually seen the show and it opened in 2001, and although they have been to AK somewhere in that timeframe, the only other WDW attractions they have been to since then are the waterparks and DQ in 2003...and these are kids that for 10 years of their lives were AP holders and went to WDW 2-4 times a year, 2 weeks each time.
For those of you with children...the grade level of SEVEN is a HUGE vacation consideration. Before then we took our children out of school once in the fall for 2 weeks and once in the spring for 2 weeks each year. (Our business at the time, car/truck/van rental agency prevented us from going anywhere as a family in the summer as that was one of the busiest times of the year, as was Christmas vacation). Anyway, for us it turned out the educational/recreational benefits were huge taking them at that time of their lives.
The reason we stopped after the twins reached Junior High and Joe was a Freshman in high school was...there were a lot of athlethic, mathematics team, choir shows, drama presentations, etc...that all three HAD to attend (and to be honest, they wanted to attend) which made it impossible to vacation so wonderfully off-season as we once had. So parents, take note: do this stuff off-season with your children BEFORE they get to Junior high school or you will be competing with things they should not miss!
Which brings us to NOW...how excited are we all? Very! Lol...even our normally taciturn Joe has expressed interest in our itinerary this vacation! Do you think he is anticipating the lifechange that we are all going to go through this year, regardless of whether the twins will be gone for a year as well as he? Yep. I think so.
Hopefully I will be able to report on this trip as it happens. As for now, if everything goes smoothly (cross those disney toes...er, paws?) we will leave Iowa City on Thursday, March 10th. The plan is that the kids will arrive home from school before 2:30pm (they get out at 2:10 that day), change clothes, take the school books they will need over break, grab Nala and Simba (*sigh* the twins have slept with these since age 3 and show no signs of ever leaving them behind)...let's hope their future spouses are Disney nuts, eh?...and we will all be on the road by 3pm, everything else having been packed, if not the night before, in the morning while they were at school.
Do you think this will actually unfold the way I envision? Stay tuned.
Me: 55 JoDeen, mom, Disney nut, only one of us to still have an AP
DH: 56 David, dad, loves actually getting time to relax on vacation more than anything else...which he certainly will do this time because his Achilles tendon was severed at work a month ago and he's now in his second cast.
DS17: Joe, graduating this spring, leaving for college this fall, interested in "writing" (which drives mom crazy, seeing "starving artist" painted all over his future)
DD15: Elise, older by 9 minutes than her identical twin, jazz musician extrordinaire (sax, what else?), grounded child, good student, good athlete, good voice, in show choir, community theatre yadayadayada...
DD15: Valerie, our baby lol, same as Elise except she plays the French horn so she's not in jazz band...
DD30: Lynnette, lives in Stuart, Florida (yes, the same Stuart, Florida where 2 hurricanes made landfall within weeks of each other last fall).
DDF30: Steve, friend of Lynnette, lives in California, moving to Texas, coming for a radioligist's conference in Orlando March 11-16.
I think that's all the players...
Before you get the wrong impression I must add, Elise and Val are really very individual, but they do like the same things for the most part. Oh, and they DO NOT dress alike except when they think it's a hoot to do so. We are awaiting word as to whether or not one, both or neither will be accepted into the Congress-Bundestag Exchange Program. If accepted the student leaves in the middle of July for a year in Germany with a host family (Lynnette did this her Junior year in high school). I mention this because if they go this will probably be the last Disney vacation ever the 5 of us take in this mode anyway.
As it is, the last time the 5 of us were in the parks together was...wow, 2001? The kids saw the preview of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", but have never actually seen the show and it opened in 2001, and although they have been to AK somewhere in that timeframe, the only other WDW attractions they have been to since then are the waterparks and DQ in 2003...and these are kids that for 10 years of their lives were AP holders and went to WDW 2-4 times a year, 2 weeks each time.
For those of you with children...the grade level of SEVEN is a HUGE vacation consideration. Before then we took our children out of school once in the fall for 2 weeks and once in the spring for 2 weeks each year. (Our business at the time, car/truck/van rental agency prevented us from going anywhere as a family in the summer as that was one of the busiest times of the year, as was Christmas vacation). Anyway, for us it turned out the educational/recreational benefits were huge taking them at that time of their lives.
The reason we stopped after the twins reached Junior High and Joe was a Freshman in high school was...there were a lot of athlethic, mathematics team, choir shows, drama presentations, etc...that all three HAD to attend (and to be honest, they wanted to attend) which made it impossible to vacation so wonderfully off-season as we once had. So parents, take note: do this stuff off-season with your children BEFORE they get to Junior high school or you will be competing with things they should not miss!
Which brings us to NOW...how excited are we all? Very! Lol...even our normally taciturn Joe has expressed interest in our itinerary this vacation! Do you think he is anticipating the lifechange that we are all going to go through this year, regardless of whether the twins will be gone for a year as well as he? Yep. I think so.
Hopefully I will be able to report on this trip as it happens. As for now, if everything goes smoothly (cross those disney toes...er, paws?) we will leave Iowa City on Thursday, March 10th. The plan is that the kids will arrive home from school before 2:30pm (they get out at 2:10 that day), change clothes, take the school books they will need over break, grab Nala and Simba (*sigh* the twins have slept with these since age 3 and show no signs of ever leaving them behind)...let's hope their future spouses are Disney nuts, eh?...and we will all be on the road by 3pm, everything else having been packed, if not the night before, in the morning while they were at school.
Do you think this will actually unfold the way I envision? Stay tuned.
