The Disney Post Part 3 - Packing

This is the third post in my Disney series. Today I'm going to focus on packing.

First, I would recommend finding a checklist online. This will help you remember all the basics, clothes, toiletries, etc. You can find that information anywhere, so I'm going to focus on tips given to me by friends and things that helped us save time when we arrived.

We chose to separate our luggage based on need. I'm a little neurotic about certain things, so some of this may be overkill, but it really did help me to know exactly where things were which saved us some time and stress.

1 - Bags for the flight
We had two bags that we took on our flight.
The hubby carried on a backpack (which we later used at the park). This had our camera and camcorder as well our chargers, and extra memory cards. We also packed swimsuits in case our room wasn't ready when we checked in at our resort.

I carried a shoulder bag which had several, smaller bags inside.
I had small totes, one for each child. Each of these totes had a cuddle buddy for the flight, coloring pages, stickers, crayons, fruit snacks (to help with 'popping' their ears during the ascent and descent), lollipops, an empty spill proof water bottle (for the park), autograph books with a pen, a glowstick for the first night, and sunglasses.

I had a park tote that would prove irreplaceable during our Disney trip. Inside this bag was my wristlet (you do not need a purse in Disney) with my ID, health insurance cards, debit card, and some cash for tips (you'll want to tip mousekeeping, tip at table restaurants, and also tip the driver of the shuttle to and from the airport). Having a wristlet was also very convenient to hold our park passes and room keys.

• A folder to contain itineraries, boarding passes, park maps, and envelopes for the tips for mousekeeping.
• A notebook with notes about things we wanted to do, restaurants we wanted to try (for counter service restaurants), places to use our snack credits, and a list of which rides we wanted to ride first at each park. We also used this as a journal.
• My favorite planning book about Disney World.
• A gallon size plastic bag with park essentials: hand sanitizer (make sure it's under three ounces for the flight), sunblock (again, under three ounces), bandages, triple-antibiotic ointment, stain remover wipes, hair brush, ponchos, tissues, pain medication, a small deodorant stick, wet wipes, a small flashlight, moleskin and blister bandages. For the liquid items: sanitizer, ointment, sunblock; you'll want to keep them in a quart sized baggie so that they're easily removable for x-ray when you're at the airport.
• I also left some room for jackets since we were there in January.
• If your child is frightened easily by the automatic toilets in the parks, you could also pack self adhesive notes to cover the sensor on the toilet (a family member gave us this great tip!).

2 - Checked luggage - toiletries
We used one bag for all our toiletries. Of course there was shampoo, body soap, deodorant, toothbrushes etc. - but some things that most people don't think about packing were also very helpful - hand soap (they do not provide it in your room), a small package of laundry detergent, a larger bottle of sunblock, and a larger bottle of hand sanitizer.

3 - Checked luggage - clothes/toys/food

We packed our food in a large, plastic shoebox. Before we left our house, I measured a cup of cereal into sandwich sized baggies so that each morning, we could just grab a baggie and go. Having the food in the shoebox kept everything from getting smashed in the suitcase. We also packed some plastic grocery bags to put our water bottles and snacks in each day.

We brought a couple things that our kids sleep with every night (favorite stuffed animal or blanket), but they really didn't need any toys while we were there. We woke up, went to the park, explored our resort or swam, then went to bed. If you pack glowsticks, you want to put them in a zipper bag just in case they break.

Probably my favorite tip of all was an easy and space saving way to organize clothes for the kids. I used a bunch of gallon sized zipper bags to store their outfits. For each day, I put a pair of shorts/pants, shirt, underwear, and socks (and hairbow for the girl). I also labeled each bag (taking into account the weather forecast) with their name and a day of the week. This was a great time saver as each morning, we just grabbed their bags then got them dressed. We could also put their dirty clothes/pajamas in the empty bag when we were done.

You also want to make sure to have comfy shoes for everyone - you'll be walking. A lot.

We used cable ties to secure each bag. We placed a heavy-duty nail clipper in the front pocket of each bag so that we could easily open the bags when we arrived. We also packed extra ties in the front pocket of each bag for the flight home. We used big, obnoxious bows to mark our luggage. This made it a breeze to pick out our luggage (that looked like everybody's luggage) when we came home.

4 - Strollers
We chose to bring an umbrella stroller for each child. This saved space in our hotel room. One thing that I'm really glad we did was mark each stroller with a big (glittery) bow. There were several strollers there that looked just like ours, and the cast members at Disney often rearrange the strollers when you're visiting an attraction. Having the bow made it very easy to find ours in a sea of hundreds. At night, you could also use glowsticks to mark your stroller.

I hope you are finding these tips helpful. Again, I am not a Disney-expert, so please, if you have any tips to add, I'd certainly appreciate it!

Check back for the last post in this series - all about tips for when you're in the park.

The Disney Post Part 2 - Tips for before the Trip

Thanks for coming back for my second day of tips. Today I'm going to focus on some tips for after booking, but before arriving.

1 - Restaurant Reservations
One of the best tips I got from a friend was to book restaurant reservations as soon as possible. Once you are within 180 days of arriving, you can begin making reservations. We read online reviews, checked out the Disney website for menus, and read a few books about the restaurants. We then decided to pick restaurants based on which days we would visit each resort. We chose to only use our table service credits for dinner (with the exception of a character breakfast). Our travel agent made the reservations for us and got us confirmation numbers for each meal. We also decided not to use a table credit on our last day. We wanted to be able to go to whichever park the kids liked the best and not have to worry about being at a restaurant at a specific time on our last night there.

2 - Photo pass
At Disney World, there are lots of photographers who will gladly take photos of your family. You're given a card to 'load' the photos on so that you can access them online. If you choose to order photos once you return, they cost around $12-14 per photo. Or, you can purchase all the rights to your photos for around $150 (as of March, 2012). However, if you pay for the rights before your trip, you save $50 ($100 for all the photos). We opted to do this. All in all, I'm happy with the purchase.

3 - Busy items for traveling
Before we left, I purchased Disney stickers and activity books from the dollar section at my favorite retailer. I also made a free activity book for the kids. If you do an online search for "free Disney Coloring Pages" you can print pictures of your child's favorite characters to color. There were also some fun activity pages (dot-to-dots, word searches, counting pages, etc.) that I printed for the kids. These were life-savers during our flight.

4 - Shopping before the trip
We decided to buy a Disney shirt for each of our children for each day. We were able to get clothes on clearance on Disney's website and at different department stores. We saved quite a bit compared to buying clothes there.

We also bought some sort of light up toy or glowstick for each night. Your kids are going to want some light up toy while you're there, so why not buy them in advance for MUCH less? We bought glowsticks from the dollar store/craft store, and bought light up toys at our party store.

5 - Snacks and drinks
I recommend packing many snacks for your trip. One thing I would mention is not to pack dense items like chocolate or peanut butter - if these items are in your checked luggage, TSA may have to search your luggage as these items can look like explosives on the x-ray image. We packed baggies of cereal and pop-tarts for breakfast, bags of crackers, cookies, and chips, and single drink mix packets to add into water.

A few days before our trip, we also had bottled water delivered to our resort (via Costco). This was nice to have at the parks each day.

The next blog will be about packing for your trip. Thanks again for reading!

The Disney Post Part 1 - Before and During Booking

So in late January we took our first trip to THE Disney World. It was awesome. We had such a good time that we are already talking about going back. So, I thought I would create a post about money saving ideas, time saving ideas, and just helpful information. It will hopefully help some of our friends who are planning trips. And, whenever we go back, I can also look back at this post to refresh my memory. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am in NO WAY an expert on Disney travel. Like I said, this was only my first trip, but I did pick up a few tips (please, feel free to add some of your own!)

Before and During Booking:

1 - Picking a date
The very first thing we did was contact a travel agent that specializes in Disney vacations. We chose Build a Better Mouse Trip. We asked if there were any free dining promotions, then decided to travel during those dates (free dining saves you over $600 for a family of four compared to purchasing a dining plan). We also checked out Disney's website and made sure that we didn't book a trip during any other events (dance competitions, marathons, etc). This gave us a list of certain dates that we would prefer to visit.

2-Choosing a flight
Next, we were ready to start planning our trip. My husband signed up for low-fare alerts from airlines. When the hubby got an alert saying that airfare would be $69 per person, we chose our travel dates. We decided to book our own flight online so that we could get the inexpensive tickets ASAP. We also opted to take the earliest flight to Orlando - this meant we almost spend the whole day at the park. We chose late afternoon for our departure - this way we could sleep in and just relax on our last day there.

3 - Booking the trip
Next, we contacted our travel agent to tell them during which dates we wanted to travel. As I mentioned above, we decided to travel during a free dining promotion. One thing to note is that you get different plans based on what type of resort you choose- for example, if you stay at a value resort during the free dining promotion, you get two quick service meals (think food court type meals) and a snack each day for each person. If you stay at a moderate resort (this is what we chose), you get one quick service, one table service (sit-down), and one snack per person. If I would have done my research, I would have discovered that we could have stayed at a value resort then paid a small fee to upgrade our plan to the one with the table service. This would have saved us money overall since the moderate resorts cost more per night.

4 - Choosing a resort
Our travel agent helped us pick a resort. We chose Port Orleans, Riverside. Like I said, we stayed in a moderate resort. Part of the reason we chose moderate is ignorance - as mentioned above, I didn't know that I could get the better dining plan while staying at a value resort. Some other reasons we chose the resort we did was that moderate hotels have refrigerators in their room, values don't (unless you pay extra). There is also some extra space in the moderate rooms compared to the value resorts. We specifically chose Port Orleans because they had very high traveler reviews compared to other Disney resorts. We also like that the grounds looked so beautiful, that there is a restaurant and food court (which, by the way, we didn't use), that there are multiple pools, and that there are many activities (outdoor movies, fishing, horse drawn carriage rides, ferry rides to downtown Disney). When you choose your resort, I would recommend talking to your travel agent, reading traveler reviews online, looking at amenities on the Disney website, and borrowing some Disney World planning books from the library. If you get an unofficial book, you can get unbiased reviews on your resort. We read the books after booking and were pleasantly surprised that we would have still picked our resort.

5 - Transportation from the hotel
When you book your hotel, your travel agent can also arrange for you to have transportation to your resort from the airport. They'll also deliver pick up your bags from MCO and deliver them to your room.

6 - Park tickets
When you book, you'll also want to decide how many days you want to visit the parks. We arrived on Monday morning and departed late afternoon on Saturday. Because of this, we chose to get park tickets for five days. We decided we could spend Saturday in downtown Disney.

We also opted to get park hoppers for all five days. Honestly, for our family, this was a waste of money. We only 'hopped' one day. For our next trip we'll either not do hoppers at all, or just get them for one or two days.

Please check back in the next couple days for some tips before the trip. Thanks for reading!

Pinning!

Well look at that. Two posts in two days. See, I promised :)

So last week I made the decision to join Pinterest. Can I just say that it is already a love-hate relationship? I love getting ideas on fun things to do with the kids and yummy food to make for my family. I like that there's so many creative people who have ideas on how to reuse everyday items in order to make something beautiful or useful. Plus, I've found so many ideas on how to use the space we have to make a stellar homeschool classroom. And lots of wonderful teachers and parents have posted creative lesson plans that have encouraged me to find fun ways to teach (I already have an idea on a Lego day - using Legos for math, science, and English). I like the inspiration to take things that I already have and use them for a greater purpose. I like that I can use it to help me better educate my children and feed them nutritional meals (don't look at my current pins, the ratio of chocolate to healthy is like, 3:1).

However, I have come to the realization that I cannot focus on 'dream whatever' or 'if I had a million dollars' or 'future this or that' ideas. I certainly don't think that it's wrong for anyone else to look at these and get ideas, so please don't think that I'm looking at other peoples pins in judgment - in fact, some of the pins I've seen have been AH-MAZING. I've just come to realize that for me, I cannot spend time focusing on things that I don't have. I refuse to let myself become unhappy by seeing all that I wish I could have. Rather, I need to focus on what I do have. In terms of non-material things, I have FAR more that I deserve. I have love from a great hubby, two fantastic kids (they pretty much adore me), and I have the greatest family and friends. I have freedom, I have life. Stuff is just stuff. Materials come and go, but love and the effects it has on you is forever. So, today I choose to focus on the good. I choose to focus on my blessings, and not compare them to other people's blessings. Bottom line: I am blessed. Period.

Almost a year?!

So I have not blogged since March 8, 2011. How ridiculous is that? I've decided I'm not going to wait this long anymore. That's my commitment to you and the two other people that still read this blog :)

So here's the past year in a nutshell:

• The kids are good - I now have a three year old and five year old, how did that happen?! X goes to preschool fours days a week and absolutely LOVES it.
• We took the kids to Disneyworld and they absolutely loved it. In the six days we were there, I fell in love and learned lots of tips on how to save time, money, and sanity there. Maybe I'll do a blog on it.
• We went back to Iowa last month. X-Man had a great visit. Every time we go the doctor is surprised at how good his feet are looking. I credit it to Dr. M fully correcting his feet, nightly stretching, nightly bracing, and daily prayer by those who love us. Thank you so much if you're one of them!
• We made a very exciting decision in the past two weeks. We're going to home school X-Man (kindergarten) next year! Over the next few months I envision this blog becoming a place that I can record and store lesson plans including the ones that are greatly successful and the ones that are less than perfect. I hope you stick around - I see many adventures in the next few months!

So for now I'll keep it short and sweet. More to follow. I promise.

December Iowa Trip

We went to Iowa during the first week of December. I love traveling around Christmas time. It's so hard to believe that last year during the same time, we were flying every week to Iowa. I do miss seeing the airports decked out in their holiday cheer, and I miss that time that I got to spend with X-Man (or Little Lou when the husband took X-Man). This trip, all four of us drove to Iowa.

We made really good time - I was a little nervous for this trip because 1 - it was our first trip with a potty-trained kid, and 2 - it was December. We got to see a lot of snow. I believe snow in the country is so much more beautiful than our city snow. The drifts on the side of the road were beautiful.

'Icebergs' on the Mississippi

Once we made it to Iowa, we checked in at the Ronald McDonald House - it looked so beautiful with all the Christmas trees! We got to meet some wonderful people who helped put our lives in perspective. There were a couple clubfoot babies there, it was nice to be able to talk to a mom who was in my situation last year. I was excited for her on the changes that were going to happen to her baby! We also met a woman who had a child with several heart issues. She said her child had to be revived almost daily - whenever she gets upset there's a chance her child will lose consciousness. I can't even imagine how scary that must be for her. It helps me keep my life in perspective and want to help others whose children were born with defects.

Also, in the house I read this poem. I remember reading it before, but kind of forgot about it. I love it so much and it really does voice how I have felt and has helped me make the most of our situation:

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this…

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley

Love it. Every time I read it I get a little teary.

Okay, back to our Iowa visit. The morning of X-Man's visit, we had breakfast while the hubby loaded the car and warmed it up for us (since, Iowa is arctic-like in December!). Well, our car wouldn't start. Luckily, there's a free bus that goes between the parking lot across the street and the hospital. The kids actually LOVED the bus!

We arrived at the hospital and got in to see Dr. Morcuende very quickly. Unfortunately, X-Man decided that he needed to throw a huge tantrum. We were still able to get him to cooperate - Dr. Morcuende was very impressed by how good his feet look. He said we'll need to get at least one more set of Mitchell's with the plantarflexion stop, then we'll be able to get a 'normal' pair of Mitchell's.

After our appointment - we took a bus back to the RMH. We arrived just as AAA was finishing up with our car - luckily, it was just a dead car battery. I don't really remember our drive home, so it must have gone well!

I cannot tell you how incredibly thankful I am of all that Dr. Morcuende, and all the staff has done for my X-Man. I am so thankful for Dr. Ponseti who first implemented a non-surgical method of treatment and for all those that have followed in his footsteps.

Five months of catch ups - Quick look at October and November

Well, again - I'm a slacker. I think I just get overwhelmed once I let this blog thing go without a post for too long. Enough is enough. If you'll read, I'll post! It's been a busy five months, but I'm going to try to get you caught up.

OCTOBER

October was great - we went to three trick-or-treat events. X-Man was a zookeeper, Little Lou was the sweetest ladybug. X-Man also 'graduated' from physical therapy - he made wonderful progress and we are so thankful for Lindsay and all she's done for us.

NOVEMBER

In November, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving with our amazing family. We were filled with Christmas spirit before December and had all our Christmas decorations out before Thanksgiving! X-Man had an appointment scheduled in November to see Dr. Morcuende but we had to reschedule until December. My next post will be all about that appointment!