Wishes And Pixie Dust

Follow the journey of a Wisconsin family of 4 who relocated to the Walt Disney World area in July 2011

Monthly Archives: May 2011


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Dealing With The ‘Ick’

Some call it the doldrums, some call it being down in the dumps; I call it ‘the ick’.  Here we have the unofficial start of summer but here in WI it’s dreary, rainy and icky; just enough to drain the happy out for a short time.  So it was this morning for me, just feeling blah and icky and needing some sun (and for the next 54 days to be in the past).

Now, I know that not every day in FL will be bright and sunny, but the sunny days will far outnumber the grey ones (the opposite of here) and there will always be our Happy Place even on those grey days; you can’t have a grey day any day in Disney World.  🙂  So, I listen to some Disney Park and Disney movie music, look at pictures of past visits, do some work toward the move and picture the dream…and the ick passes by.  It also helps to know that you’re not alone in this dream and that there are others who have already made it, some who are on the brink of making it and others who will be following.  All united by one hope, one wish, one Dream.

So, the ick has been pushed aside for another day and the Dream awaits.

Thank you all for following us on our path to our Dream and keep on following yours!

~Mark. 


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Setting Goals. Or Not.

[Artwork done by our lovely daughter, Princess Cate!]

One of the biggest challenges we have faced in our move thus far is finding the time to prepare for the move, while continuing to live our lives as normal.  We have been fortunate as we have allotted ourselves six months for the move.  Incredibly, four months have already passed us by, so we expect to step up the packing progress as our time here in Wisconsin comes to a close.

We originally set goals of packing areas by a certain date.  That didn’t seem to work so well, so we moved to setting a goal of one packed box per day.  This method seemed to flow until last week, when life got busy with prom, concerts, soccer, doctor appointments and rehearsals.  The thing with setting goals, is that you need to allow for the unexpected to occur.  One wouldn’t think this would apply with packing boxes.  Unless one has a son who has to play with every toy for two minutes before it gets packed.  🙂  It’s all good, though.

We are stepping away from setting specific goals and just trying to concentrate on getting it either packed or moved out.  The current area we are focusing on is the sunroom.

The desk area is unusable.

As this room seems to be the dumping ground for all miscellaneous paper piles, the challenge is to pack what is not needed.

Our oldest son Nick has already secured his apartment here, and will slowly be moving his belongings out in July.   He was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of an offer that gave him his first month’s rent free, so this saved on needing to rent a storage unit and stay in a hotel for a week, as his original plan was to find an apartment for August 1.  He will be taking our couch, a chair and other pieces of furniture, which will allow us to use our furniture (and more importantly our beds) until the very end.  He will also be on the receiving end of most of the kitchen appliances and supplies, as well as whatever food is left.

In other news, we have paid our security deposit on our apartment, and will be setting up an account with Progress Energy so that it is all set to go when we arrive in Florida.  Our goal is to spend our first night in Florida in our new apartment 🙂  We may need to purchase air mattresses to accomplish this goal, as we won’t be able to shop for our beds until we arrive.  We will be setting up an account with Bright House for our cable and internet, but will wait until we arrive to make this appointment.

We have found a wonderful Yahoo Group, Clermont Connection Cafe, which has already given us a wealth of information, from lovebugs to wholesale clubs to doctor referrals. Everyone we’ve had the opportunity to talk to who lives in Clermont is very friendly and welcoming to us, something we’ve appreciated immensely.  We look forward to being a part of this wonderful community.


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From AOL to Facebook

It is an accurate statement to say that social media has a significant impact on all of our lives.  We have the ability to connect with individuals who live in many different parts of the world–strangers who become friends.  We feel fortunate to have made so many friends on Facebook who share our dream of the love of Disney; even if you have no plans to relocate to Florida, we still have the common thread of Walt Disney.

You might say our relationship and subsequent marriage started on the Internet.  We met on AOL in a dating forum, and because Mark at the time worked for United Airlines at O’Hare Airport, he was able to fly up to Wisconsin for weekend visits.  Our relationship evolved, and after a short engagement, we were married fourteen years ago this September.   Since that time, we have met and made new friends through the use of Yahoo Groups and emails, and now with the advent of Facebook, the ability to connect with more friends has really increased.

We don’t believe that we would have the courage to make this move without the support of our friends on Facebook and the search engines of Google.  🙂   We wanted to take the time to say thanks for following us and encouraging us as we make this huge step of relocating from Wisconsin to Florida.    There are still lots of details to attend to and boxes to pack, but we really feel like Florida is our home now, mainly through the people we have met online.  So, thank you!

We started this blog mainly for our own purposes, as a fun way to document our adventure.  We didn’t expect that we’d make new friendships and learn new information along the way!    We’d love to hear feedback from you, if there is a particular aspect of moving you’d like us to blog about, or if you’d like to be a guest blogger, please feel free to contact us about that as well.  We’d like to think that this blog is yours as well. 🙂


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Paper Tiger

This morning was spent trying to tame the paper tiger.   As we continue packing and preparing for our move, it would be a fair estimate to say at least 15% of our belongings involve paper in some way, shape or form.  This includes but is not limited to kids’ school papers, personal papers, greeting cards, insurance papers, articles from magazines, stacks of magazines, printed emails, and of course, the filing cabinet, the place where papers go when you don’t know what else to do with them.

We are going paperless as much as possible.   We have requested all statements to be received in email format, if supported by the company.  We pay all our bills online, with the exception of the rent check, which must be mailed, and the water bill, because the city does not offer online or even credit card options for payment.   We are trying to minimize the amount of mail that needs to be forwarded from Wisconsin to Clermont.  We have lost mail when moving a few blocks; we can only imagine how much mail would go missing across a few states.

As we sort through the filing cabinet, we are finding that most papers can be disposed of, and very little needs to be kept.   We hope to be able to contain all our papers within a file box, and maintain this once we move.  We will move the file cabinet, as it is already included in the moving inventory, but it will probably be moved into one of the kids’ rooms as a storage place for papers and journals.

One of the interesting aspects of moving long distance, if afforded the luxury of time, is that you are able to decide what is truly important to you, and you discover the things you thought were so important to you, really do not fall into the category of things that matter. One of the truly exciting things about this move is that our possessions will truly be ones that we want to have, and we will indeed be starting over in terms of acquiring furniture. It is very freeing to let go of possessions that only serve to clutter and complicate your life.


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Just Keep Swimming

We just finished watching Finding Nemo tonight for the one billionth time.   Well, okay, that may be stretching the truth just a little.  🙂 However, our Disney movies are well-loved and watched many times over.  Lately, we have been feeling a kinship with Marlin, just swimming along and not seeming to reach our goal.

Of course we know this isn’t true– we are making progress, and it is beginning to be noticeable.  The Christmas decorations are packed away, and there is progress being made in the kids’ rooms.  We have decided not to set goals for a particular room as we had earlier, but rather in terms of boxes or tasks.  It just seems outrageous that it is the middle of May already!  Wasn’t it just yesterday that it was January and we made the decision to move?  69 days to go!

We discovered that the kids will not be going to Clermont Middle School as we had assumed, but rather East Ridge Middle School, according to the boundary lines.  We have started the enrollment process and hope to have that well in place by the time we leave Wisconsin.  This adjustment is our main concern for our children; however it will be nice to have both children in the same school, if only for a year.

In terms of finances, we’ve sent off our final deposit payment for the apartment, and plan to keep putting away as much as possible.  We’ve had some unexpected dental expenses pop up, and all the monies for the kids’ field trips seem to have come due at the same time, but it’s all good.  God is blessing us with the means for the move.  We have two items on Craigslist with buyers coming tomorrow, which will give us sixty dollars to feed the pig.  (aka our piggy bank).  We are very curious as to how much the pig will yield in July!  And we will, of course, post the total here.

Right now our “Dory” is Walt Disney World, which encourages us to “just keep swimming…..”  While WDW is not the sole reason we are moving to Florida, it has been two years since we’ve visited the World, and we are looking forward to welcoming it back.  So among the many Goodwill trips, packing of boxes, and dealing with life’s daily routines and unexpected occurrences, we keep our sights set on the move and visualize ourselves walking down Main Street towards Cinderella Castle.

Mostly we are looking forward to moving beyond the stage of packing boxes and settling in to our Floridian life.  Just Keep Swimming!