The evening star is shinin’ bright. So make a wish and hold on tight. There’s magic in the air tonight, and anything can happen.

Tiana– Princess and The Frog

It has been 1, 276 days since we first dared to dream the dream of moving to the Walt Disney World area, and with only 21 days to go, we can honestly say that we have no regrets.   We can only imagine how incredibly difficult it will be to leave our son behind; it’s a parent’s mission to protect and care for their children, and even though he is nineteen years old and a sophomore in college, it still seems wrong to not bring him with us.  We are reassured that he does have a solid plan in place, and in fact he signed the lease papers today on his new apartment.

We have been busy scheduling our disconnects in Wisconsin, and arranging our utilities and cable hook-ups for Florida.  The comment that we have been hearing a lot refers to the fact that we’re moving at the wrong time of the year.  🙂  Yes, granted, July is not an ideal time of year to be moving to hot and humid Florida, but we wanted the kids to finish out the year at their respective schools, and would rather not have them join a new school in Florida after the start date.  The first day of school in Florida is August 22, which gives us less than a month of summer vacation left after we arrive in Clermont.

Wednesday we went down to the AAA office and ordered our Trip Tix and picked up a complimentary guidebook for Tennessee.  Silly us, forgot to get the Florida book, but we will make sure to get that when we pick up the Trip Tix in a couple of weeks.

We are pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive the utilities and cable bill are projected to be compared to Wisconsin.   We didn’t realize the extent to how much more we are paying here, and it definitely is one of the perks of moving to Florida.   Our rent will be $286 more than we are currently paying, but our bills will probably go down by an equivalent amount, more or less.  Of course, there is the monthly payment plan to Disney that we add on 😉

The Florida Department of Education released today its school grades based on the FCAT results, and we are very pleased to see that the middle school the kids will be attending received an A for the third year in a row.   Click here to access the database.

We are still packing boxes and listing items on Craigslist, and we have lists all around of what we need to do yet.   We titled this blog post “Hold On Tight”, because we feel like we are in a queue area, waiting to experience the attraction.  It’s like packing and planning for the ultimate Disney trip, afraid we’re going to forget to plan for something, but uber-excited about the final destination.  It is going to be so weird driving through Wisconsin for the final time, and knowing we won’t be returning.

Happy July 1st to all our readers~may all your dreams come true.