Do you ever sit and think about when you planned a vacation, how it all seemed so far away and then when you are actually there it seems to have flown by? Perspective seems to be everything not only with vacations but with life too. We started school this week but of course have been overwhelmed with the thought of our vacation that there it is really easy to distract everyone! We keep getting shipments in the mail whether it be from Disney World, Disney Cruise Lines, The Disney Store or other random purchases we have made to prep that it's easy to get off track!
How far in advance do you begin packing? Our Disney Store order arrived (part 1 of 2) and I really wanted to begin right away but I knew that suitcases would just get in the way of our daily lives. We packed about a month early for our winter in Mexico and well let's just say it got aggravating to see things laying around all the time! I felt that it was necessary so that we would have all that we need but of course we ended up with WAY TOO MUCH!! I am hoping to avoid that this time around as we are driving AND we are now driving a rental that is MUCH smaller than our regular car...why? Oh because the engine blew on our vehicle and it will take them about 30 days to put in a new one...YUP, when it's vacation time for our family something drastic always happens. It also happens to be the week that our property taxes are due and that happens to be ON our anniversary! Can we have an anniversary dinner at McDonald's please? Oh well, we are thankful no one was hurt and that the Lord has provided us with all that we need, it could be worse!
One way we love to countdown our vacation is with a simple paper chain. The entire family gets involved in making the paper chain and then the top of our countdown becomes a window or door decoration on the trip too! With each day we take off a paper strip and pull one question from our Disney Trivia game and ask it out loud. This helps us prepare for the DCL trivia game onboard and also to have fun every day when pulling off the link for the day.
I have been hitting up Disney Outlets and used video places (they sometimes sell Disney pins) to fill up their lanyards with pins to trade! I love spending next to nothing on pins and they get ones they really want and have fun doing it! It's an activity that can be enjoyed in the parks and on the ship. The kids also have their own itineraries and money put on a gift card for them.
I've also kept busy making door and window décor for our resort and cruise stays. Getting the kids involved in one activity a week, 1 Disney Family Movie a week, 1 package arrival a week takes car of almost half the week and easily helps it fly by. We also like to spend 1 day of the weekend chatting about things we like to do where we want to go first and sometimes opinions change and others they stay the same. Needless to say the planning all goes by in a whirlwind.
We also like to buy books that pertain to our vacation destination once every other month or so to help with planning but mainly to look at all there is to do! We are Members of B&N and that gives us 20% off coupons that come in the mail every other month or so and then add it to the 10% members discount we get daily and it's well worth it! We always know when a coupon comes in it's time to buy a vacation book!
My daughter and I are having a blast making bows for our MagicBands that can easily be made into hair bows on the days we do not have them on the bands. We are also cute bag obsessed! This is a lunch cooler that we have decided to carry around as a purse! LOL
Even when we are not planning for Disney, it's always on my mind! Here I am at my book club and ready to talk Disney with anyone that eyes my purse! The Disney Dooneys are my biggest weakness!
The planning binder is a MUST for our Disney trips. We change out the cover sheet for each vacation and each page inside can easily be accessed for additional information. We use highlighters and different colored pens and inside is a folder that holds any documents we get from Disney. I will be doing a Disney Binder post in the future where I will just go through this binder. One thing we love about our cover sheet is that it has the vacation year on the bottom and destination at the top but the center is plain and this is done with a purpose. When it's time to go, we ditch the binder and put all the sheets inside the pockets of our passporter on the coordinating days and then we pull out the cover sheet, laminate it and use a magnetic clip to turn it into our dry-erase board on our resort room doors or cruise line door! It's so much fun to read all the messages from people.
Just a hint of our planning madness, but it sure is fun! With our Transatlantic cruise next year, I hope to document our entire planning process with a once a week post, but we will see as I have already booked the trip and we have been getting things in the mail for some time now. Having 2 trips booked at one time is crazy! Enjoy every minute my friends, time certainly flies when you are having fun!
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