Wishes And Pixie Dust

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

Author Archives: wishesandpixiedust


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The Princess And The Frog

In Wisconsin we had a ritual on Saturday night:  we would eat a dinner of pizza while sitting around the television and watch a Disney movie.  We did this for years, ever since the children were toddlers, and weren’t quite able to participate in eating pizza yet. 😉  When we moved to Florida, we needed to adjust our plans somewhat and forgo pizza night, as one) we had no television, and two) we had no furniture.  We are happy to report that we now have both a television and furniture, but we’re discovering that Saturday doesn’t exactly work the best for us, as we’re usually in a theme park that day.  So we’ve decided to be flexible with the date, and tonight was our pizza night, while we watched, of course, The Princess and The Frog!

We originally chose The Princess and The Frog as this blog’s theme as a way to conceal our identities until we were ready to announce who we are.  The movie fit our family’s dynamics well, but the selling point was Louis, because our daughter just loves alligators. It’s funny, because when we first saw the movie, it didn’t seem all that good, and we weren’t sure if we were even going to buy it.  But we did, and now it’s one of our favorites.

We were at Port Orleans Riverside on our daughter’s birthday; she saw this and we picked it up for her as a present.  Kissing would be nice, yes?

You can imagine our delight last weekend when we were able to do a character meet and greet with Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen.  Naveen is no longer a regular with Tiana, so we were thrilled to be able to come across both of them together:

We started our blog on June 7, 2010 on Blogger (if you go to March archives and scroll back, you can see all our earlier posts), and then made the jump to WordPress in March. We initially started it for ourselves, as documentation of our move, and as an ongoing record of what we had completed and what we yet needed to complete.  We were thrilled when our readership jumped, and we saw that our progress was helping other people with their own moves. Our readers comments have helped us to make decisions along the way, and we are grateful for all the feedback and suggestions we have received.  We are blessed to have made friendships over the past few months; friendships that probably would not have existed without the blog, and we are doubly blessed to continue these friendships in person.

Our blog has always been about relocation, and the issues and concerns regarding it.  We have never been, nor don’t intend to be, a Disney blog.  There are many Disney blogs out there; we follow a lot of them, and we don’t feel that we could add anything unique to what’s been written.  Now that we are settled, honestly, we don’t have much to write about regarding the relocation process, and at this point in time we feel like our blog has served its purpose.  You can find a list of our favourite blogs (and podcasts) by reading our blog on Getting, and Staying, In The ‘Disney Mood’.

We will keep the Facebook page, Wishes And Pixie Dust active, as well as our website that contains our blog, as we hope it will help those who are still in the relocation process.  We may post occasional blogs to the site, but generally we will not publish regular posts.  It’s hard to set aside something that has been a part of our lives for 15 months:  in one form or another, we both have been actively involved in Wishes and Pixie Dust, whether it be blog writing or website development or researching information.  But it’s time to let go and move on.

We welcome our readers to contact us on Facebook or Twitter if they have any questions regarding relocation, and we’re happy that you have been a part of our life over the past fifteen months.

May you have a magical, pixie-dust filled day, and remember the words of Walt Disney:

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.


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Living Life In Florida

When we were planning our move to Florida, we were excited at the possibility of our expenses being lower than in Wisconsin.  Now that we’ve been here for over six weeks, we thought we would take a look at our actual expenses and share them with our readers. For a reference point, our apartment is 1,389 sq feet.

  • Our monthly rent increased by $186; however, we are no longer responsible for lawn care.
  • Our monthly cable bill for phone, internet and television decreased by $5.
  • No more gas bill (averaged $35-45 in summer; $300 in winter)
  • Our electric bill is $220, which is not bad considering we haven’t been careful about our usage, we had many pool days which means more towels to wash, and it’s summer 🙂  We expected it to be less, but it’s less than it would be in Wisconsin.
  • Our income increased because there are no withholdings for state income tax.
  • The biggest change is our water bill.  In Wisconsin we were paying $135 monthly. In Florida we paid $8.64.  We do expect the bill to go up for September, as the meter was read August 5 for the water, which resulted in only 12 days of water, but we don’t expect it to be a significant amount.
  • Our gasoline usage has increased significantly, due to the fact we are approximately 40-50 minutes away from Disney (one way), Clermont is much more spread out than Fond du Lac was, and approximately an hour’s worth of gas is used daily for bringing the kids to and from school.
  • Groceries are approximately 15-20% more expensive here than in Wisconsin, and significantly lacking in a variety of dairy products 🙂  We find that we shop at four different grocery stores:  Winn-Dixie, Publix, Sweetbay and Target, which is an extremely different routine for us.  (We’re used to shopping at one, and we’ve really been missing it lately).
New bills for Florida:
  • Disney annual passes are $150 per month
  • Pest control fee is $1 per month
  • Valet trash fee is $15 per month
  • Sunpass:  this varies on how often we go into Orlando, but in six weeks since we’ve been here we’ve spent $17.50 in tolls.  It will go down considerably from here on because we’re not using the Turnpike as much now.
So are we paying less in expenses than Wisconsin?  No, but we’re not paying more, either. It all seems to equal out in the end.  We do acknowledge the fact that if we were renting a house, we would be paying more in expenses; in terms of lawn care, pool upkeep and a higher bill for pest control.  We’re quite satisfied with the apartment complex and love not having the responsibilities that renting or owning a home entails.  We recognize that apartment living is not for everyone, but it suits us perfectly.  


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Update On School

We want to update our readers on how school is progressing for our children.  We confess that this is a major hurdle that made us hesitate about relocating to Florida.  How would the schools in Florida compare to those in Wisconsin?  Our son is special needs and has an IEP in place, so we needed to make sure the level of services he receives in Florida would be comparable to what was established in his Wisconsin IEP.

We attended the open house the Thursday afternoon prior to the start of school.  We made sure to inform all the teachers that our children were new, because quite frankly, it was a little overwhelming for them.  We received the schedules, and then went room to room to meet the teachers.  The school has three buildings; the first building is the office, but the other two buildings hold the classrooms.  Here is a view from the bridge that connects the buildings:

Their new school is approximately twice as big as the middle school they would have attended in Wisconsin.  On days when there is lightning, and let’s face it, this is Florida, so probably a weekly occurrence :-), they have “lightning lockdowns” where the students are not allowed to go between buildings if it is storming.  It is interesting to note, however, that even though there are over 1,100 students attending here, the average class size is between 22-25 students, which is lower than what they would have experienced in Wisconsin.

We discovered that information is not given freely here to new families arriving.  At open house, we questioned his advisory teacher, and discovered that Ben was just to be dropped off at school.  At this point in time, we were grateful that Catie attended the same school, as she is able to walk Ben to his aide.  However, we were not informed exactly how long the line gets at pick-up time.  We’ve discovered that we need to leave the house at 3:15 for a 4:00 dismissal time, just to stake our place in line.  It would have been nice to have learned this information at open house, and thus help Ben avoid the couple of meltdowns he had while waiting for us to progress through the line that first day.

Overall we feel school is going well for the children.  We’ve had a couple of bumps with Ben, but they’ve been easily resolved, and we feel his teachers are committed to making sure he succeeds.  Catie was able to get into a chorus class, which she was thrilled with.  We do wish that orchestra was offered here, as Catie plays the violin, but we knew before we moved that it was not, and of the two, chorus is a better option.  Catie has a gift for singing and aspires one day to pursue this professionally.  The school is monitored closely: identification is required to pick your child up from school early–they do check it against the computer records and require a signature– and a note is required for an excused absence upon return to the school.  A little more strict than what we’re used to, but it’s all good.

If you are planning to relocate to Florida, we recommend researching and contacting the schools prior to your move, to get a feel of what they might be like.  You can usually tell from contact with the staff the atmosphere of the school.


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Clermont is Home

Yesterday marked the six week anniversary of our arrival in Florida, and we thought we would share with you our thoughts about the adjustment process.  Prior to our move we had heard from others who completed long distance moves and were informed that it could take up to a year (or more) for this to feel like home.  We are happy to say that we don’t anticipate it will take that long.  It goes without saying that we miss our family and friends in Wisconsin, and at times it’s hard being away from them, but we have made new relationships that would not have been possible without the move, and we are happy to know these individuals better and call them our friends.  It does seem a little weird, though, not to have anyone to list as an emergency contact on the school forms.

For those of you in the process of preparing for a long distance move, we recommend donating or selling as much as possible.  Seriously, get rid of it now.  We have been saying on this blog since early on that unless you love it or it has meaning to you, don’t keep it. We have discovered that the boxes you do move with you have to be unpacked, and then furniture needs to be purchased to put the items into (assuming you don’t move the furniture with you).  As we were packing boxes and preparing for the move, there was one conversation that kept resurfacing, and that was the question of which articles of furniture we should consider moving.  We find it interesting that in the end, the furniture we chose to move with us fits perfectly in the apartment, and had we elected to move an end table we were considering, there would have been no place for it.

We feel at home in Clermont, and have absolutely no regrets about our decision to move here.  Yes, we are further than we’d like to be from Walt Disney World, and we find that our trips in are less spontaneous and more planned around our family’s responsibilities. However, we love that we do not live in an area where tourists frequent; it makes it feel more like home.  We are becoming more familiar with the area, and have discovered which side streets we can take to avoid travelling on Highway 50.  We had our first pizza night last night since moving to Clermont, and it was awesome to get back into familiar routines. Which Disney movie did we watch?  The Princess and the Frog, of course! 🙂

We love that we are able to refurnish our house piece by piece.  Catie’s room is completely done, Ben needs a dresser yet, and we need a dresser and some bookcases.  We’ve gone with a beech wood theme in our living room when buying furniture, and love the lighter color of the wood.  We tend to decorate in brighter colors here, to match the sunny climate. We have yet to purchase a sofa; we haven’t found one we like that will match our color scheme, and we refuse to settle on a cheap substitute just to “have a sofa”.  We have found plenty of sofas in tan/darker neutral colors, but we want something with a lighter edge to it.  One of the furniture stores we go to often is Clermont Furniture by Winn Dixie.  We really like the selection and prices, the owner/manager is not an aggressive “in-your-face” type salesman, and they offer same day delivery with really reasonable delivery rates. One of the things we’ve discovered is that in general furniture stores will offer low prices on furniture, but then over-inflate delivery costs.  We really like that Clermont Furniture does not do that.

We recommend researching the area you intend to relocate into, to discover which stores and amenities are available prior to your move.   This will help you to get a feel for your area, and make it feel more familiar to you once you do arrive.  There are still times when we can hardly believe that we live in Florida; sort of a “don’t pinch  me, I might wake up” moment.  🙂  It seems weird to be living in a totally different part of the United States, but we all seem to be adjusting well.  Clermont is home 🙂

 

 

 


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Car Registration

After you obtain your driver’s license, the next step in the process is to register your vehicle with the state of Florida and receive your license plate.  Florida state law requires that your car be registered within ten days of enrolling a child in school or obtaining employment.  However, before this can be accomplished you will need to provide proof of vehicle insurance, from a company licensed in Florida.  You will also need your original title. In Wisconsin we had a policy with State Farm and decided to continue coverage with State Farm in Florida, more for ease of convenience than anything else. Our previous agent helped us find a Florida agent close to home, and they worked together in transferring our account from Wisconsin to Florida.  We were able to make an appointment over a month in advance, and we recommend using the same insurer if at all possible, because it really does ease the process.

In Wisconsin we carried auto insurance, renter’s insurance and an umbrella policy.  In Florida, we have the same policies; however, State Farm in Florida does not provide renter’s insurance, so we needed to underwrite the policy to a different company, which of course required an additional $157 payment that we were not expecting to pay upfront (we are billed monthly on the State Farm payment plan and it comes directly out of our checking account).  We will be billed quarterly for the renter’s policy from this point forward.  This means our State Farm policy will remain approximately the same as what we paid in Wisconsin, but without renter’s insurance, and with less coverage (we opted to drop full coverage on our vehicle).  Vehicle insurance in Florida is considered one of the highest rates in the United States (and after the way we see people drive we so understand why), so please be prepared financially with that realization before you move.

Our appointment with State Farm was in the morning, and after we obtained our driver’s licenses, we drove to the building where we would then register our vehicle.  Keep in mind that the building where you receive your driver’s license is not the same building you register your car at.  (Another peculiarity different than Wisconsin).  You also may not make an appointment here:  you wait for your number to be called.  We had estimated our fees to be approximately $180: imagine our surprise when we discovered the actual total was $409!  We did not realize that an initial registration fee of $225 is charged if there is no Florida registration to transfer.  The tag renewal is based on the birth date, and you will pay the full fee regardless on when you register your vehicle.  We will need to renew in December, and it is estimated that our renewal fee will be $60.

It is highly recommended that you do not purchase a vehicle less than six months before you move, as you will need to pay the difference between Florida’s state sale tax and your own state’s sale tax. If at all possible, wait until you arrive in Florida to purchase that new vehicle, or do it more than six months out.  You will need to prove that you have owned the vehicle for longer than six months, so be sure to have that paperwork on hand.

We hope the posts on obtaining your driver’s license and vehicle registration have proved helpful.  We know we would have loved to have this information prior to our move, and if it helps someone out, then it’s totally worth the time it has taken to pull it together. 🙂