Wishes And Pixie Dust

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

Category Archives: Packing


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The Eye Before The Storm

There comes a point in every move where you are lulled into a false sense of security.   You think there’s no need to alter your daily schedule too much, there’s still plenty of time to pack boxes and make arrangements.  You go on with your routines, only to discover two weeks have passed, and you realize you really are behind schedule, and thus the “storm” begins.  We feel right now that we are in that “eye before the storm”, the calm period when everything feels okay.  Our goal, however, is to make sure the hurricane storms dissipate to sunny skies, and we never see the storm clouds on our horizon.

We wanted to share just what our daily life looks like lately.  The kids are now out of school for the summer, and we’re just enjoying the laziness and schedule-free qualities of not needing to set alarm clocks or rushing dinner times.  During the day we are packing boxes or sorting through items; today we made a run to get more paper rolls for packing, and we were graced with free shorter rolls today.   Apparently an individual had come in about an hour ahead of us and bought all the large rolls, but we were given the shorter rolls, and to be honest, we probably received just as much paper and saved twelve dollars in the process!

As we reflect on first making the decision to move in January to it now being almost the middle of June, things have gone pretty much according to plan.  We had anticipated saving a little more money than we have, but we’re still in the comfortable zone, and well, it is what it is.  We made the decision to hire professional movers and we stand behind that decision one hundred percent.    Yes, it may seem like an extravagant cost, but we have items that have sentimental value, and other things that just would prove to be too much of a hardship to replace.  We have disposed of a lot of our possessions, which we know has probably halved our cost of the move, but we choose to keep the items that matter to us, to provide security to our family.  Let’s face it, moving across several states is a huge life decision that will require many months of adjustment.   By choosing to transport some of our items with us, we are helping to ease that transition, and our apartment will seem more like a home.

We are keeping our storm clouds at bay by making sure we accomplish a few things each day in regards to the move, whether it be packing boxes, taking care of items on Craigslist, or just simply making lists.  By not procrastinating, and doing the move in little chunks here and there, it really has become not that painful.   We are grateful that we do not have the worries of needing massive amounts of energy and strength to move boxes and furniture, nor the stress of driving a moving truck across several states.  For more times than we care to remember, we have been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and are simply not doing it again.

We anticipate that our lives in Florida will basically be the same as our lives here in Wisconsin, only with much better weather and lots more to do in our free time.   We know it’s not going to be an easy process, but with the promise of being able to visit Walt Disney World at a whim’s notice, and meeting our Floridian (and non-Floridian) Disney friends who have been cheering us on for several months, we know it will be well worth the effort.


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Farewell to Rosenow

Today was another series of “lasts”:  the last time I will drive to and from the schools, which surprisingly feels very weird, but more importantly, it is the last time Catie and Ben will see the inside of their respective schools.  Catie will miss her friends more than the school, but poor Ben has been having a rough adjustment with transitioning on.  At fifth grade graduation yesterday, the principal gave a small talk about the “Rosenow Way” (Rosenow is the name of the elementary school):  the school environment is a close-knit community, where teachers treat the students as their own children, and the students are always welcome back to the school to visit.  He said, “you can always come back home”. Ben has been attending Rosenow since 2003–eight years is a long time in a young child’s life, and especially with a child who has autism:  it’s so very hard to walk away from what is familiar.

 

We reached an important milestone in the Vitek household today:  we brought up the few remaining items that were left in the basement.  It may not seem too monumental to some, but this is the first time ever that we have been living in a house that does not have piles and piles of boxes in the basement.   This is what was left in the basement:

So we have added to our Goodwill/Freecycle pile 🙂  We have been trying to pack at least a box a day, if not more.  We have started to organize our photos/videos/candles into the bags they will go in our car trunk.  With our pictures we are throwing away the duplicates and those stored on the computer.  We can always order more prints.   When we first decided to move in July, we were totally unaware that certain items could melt while in transit, notably crayons, videotapes, candles, and potentially cassette tapes and photographs.  Well, we knew about crayons, having previous experience during a family vacation trip to St. Louis, but didn’t think about the rest.  🙂  The framed pictures are being packed, but we will be bringing all the non-digital photographs with us, as they are totally irreplaceable.  Life before digital cameras:  the horror of it all!  :=)  Looking back, I don’t think we would have altered our decision, as it is important to us that the kids finish out their school year in Wisconsin, which they have.  We also wanted to make sure that we move in the summer months, as moving in the dead of winter, which we have done, is certainly not an ideal situation, and one to be avoided if at all possible due to the potential for delays and detours due to the weather conditions.

We wish everyone a magical and happy weekend!

 

 

 


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Baby, It’s Hot Outside

We almost felt like we were Floridians yesterday; our high reached 97 degrees, with the heat index in the 100’s!  While we are enjoying the weather (after all, this is what we are moving in to!), we do wish Mother Nature would tone it down a little, if nothing else but to save on our electric bill!

We received a shipment of boxes late Monday afternoon, and one of the boxes he brought was a huge TV/Large Picture box, which we requested for Ben’s marble vortex toy.  At first we thought it might be a little too big,  but then realized the toy and several odd-shaped items could fit in there as well, so we’re actually quite happy that the box was over sized.

We’ve been experiencing a series of “lasts”.  We recognize that certain things we do will be the last time we do them, possibly forever (but who knows what the future holds?)  We met with our insurance agent yesterday, to find out information regarding the steps we need to do to transfer our policies down to Florida.  We have been with this particular agent since we first moved to Fond du Lac from Chicago, twelve years ago.  We’re finding it’s hard to walk away from local businesses that we’ve patronized for so long.  It’s not going to prevent us from moving, but it’s also producing sadness and a feeling of loss that really we did not anticipate.  There are a lot of unique businesses that only exist either in this city or in the Midwest, that we will be walking away from.

One of these establishments is Friar Tucks, and we decided to take advantage of the kids still being in school, and do a last visit.

This is a small bar/restaurant that serves the absolute best one-third pound cheeseburgers.  There are a couple other locations in Wisconsin, located in Oshkosh and Manitowoc, and our son Nick works as a cook at the seafood restaurant this same company owns.

This morning we will have another “last”– our son Ben’s 5th grade graduation.  This is also a tough moment, as we have had children attending this particular elementary school for eight years.  Ben is particularly having a hard time separating from this school, his friends and teachers, and especially his aide, who has been a constant in his life since Kindergarten. She entered his life at a time when the school district was moving away from 1:1 aides as “not being in the best interest of children who have autism”, and we are so thankful that she has been able to remain by Ben’s side in spite of that fact.  We will post pictures later of the celebration!

We will stop posting updates on the “Wishes-And-Pixie-Dust” friend on Facebook effective July 22nd, so we encourage you to friend and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.   We plan to post a lot of pictures along the way using Twitter, and will be able to post blog updates each night.    We are Mark Vitek and Jen Vitek on Facebook, and @FondyMark and @jvitek on Twitter.  We do encourage you to friend and follow both of us, because we won’t be posting the same updates on both accounts.  It depends on who’s not driving!

Have a magical day!!


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Checklists

As we pass the seven-week mark life seems to be a whirlwind of not only daily activity, but also everything that we need to remember to do in preparation for our move.  Up to this point we have set tentative goals that we have met at times; at others not, but as we move into the home stretch we realize that it needs to be on paper.

For those of you who are wishing to follow in our footsteps and plan a long-distance move, we thought we would share our paper organization and checklist methodology.  Feel free to tweak it to fit your own needs.

Inventory:  Every box that is packed is given a unique letter combination.  We started with A, worked our way to Z, and now are advancing to the double letters (AA, BB, etc).  For example, Living Room A.   On the laptop we have an Excel file with several worksheets that lists the contents of all the boxes.  This can be a little tedious when packing and does take extra time, but it will prove invaluable when we find ourselves in Florida with an apartment full of moving boxes, and wondering where we put something.  We’ll just need to pull up the Excel file on the laptop and will be able to pinpoint which box it is we need to locate.

Blue File:  This is where we keep all our documents that we will need on our journey: school papers for the kids, automobile documents for the DMV, hotel information for our stays along the way.

File Box:  This is what we use to keep the papers we need to move with us but don’t necessarily want to put in a moving truck, such as banking information or credit card statements.  As we sort through the filing cabinet, most of it is getting shredded or scanned.

Notebook:  This is our checklist.  Each room has its own page, where we list what we are moving with us, what will get donated, what will get sold, what will be given to Nick, and last but not least what we still need to do in that particular room, in terms of cleaning or purchasing replacement products, such as new blinds.   The notebook will also be where we keep notes on what we need to do yet before our move, what documents we need to acquire yet, and what phone calls need to be made.   We find that as our departure date gets closer, we are more distracted and likely to forget things, and this helps to keep us on track. It also helps to make it seem less stressful–by focusing on an item or two on the list, we are not feeing overwhelmed by thinking it all has to be done right now.

The key to a successful move is organization and planning, and we share this information not to overwhelm you with ideas, but to help you plan out your move.   Have we moved without doing all this?  Absolutely, usually our moves end up in throwing stuff in garbage bags the morning of the move, because we run out of time (and boxes), but it usually results in a lot more chaos than is necessary.  Our current goal is to be fully packed and living out of suitcases by Tuesday, July 19.  Thursday, July 21st our son will take away the furniture and mattresses that he wants.  We will spend the night in a hotel, and then Friday, July 22, of course is moving day.

Thanks for following along,

Mark and Jen

 

 


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The Beginning of Our Dream

It probably comes as no surprise to our readers that we are in full-frenzy packing mode right now.    This afternoon I was sorting through papers and came across a magazine that I knew I had to share with you.  The magazine is dated June 2008, so we would have purchased it after our December 2007 trip to the World.   Take a look at the headline underneath the magazine title and don’t you agree that this is an absolutely perfect statement as we prepare to relocate to Florida next month!

We do consider Florida our next perfect place to live!  As we draw closer to our move, I keep thinking about why we are choosing to relocate our family.  It’s not all about the weather, although it was very freeing to dispose of all our winter gear.  Unless you live in a cold weather state, you have no idea how good this feels!    It’s not all about Disney, although we both admit that we are enthusiastically looking forward to that first walk down Main Street USA as Florida residents.

“Why are you moving?” is a common question that we hear lately, and it mainly comes from individuals who can’t imagine uprooting their families and moving away from everything they know and hold dear to them.  It may be that some of our readers are considering this very question:  “Can I really do this, and relocate my family across several states?”  Our answer is definitely, yes, you can!

We have felt for quite awhile that Wisconsin is not where we are meant to be.  Yes, the desire came in 2006 after our first trip to Walt Disney World, but I suspect the feeling had been dormant for quite awhile.  It started as nothing more than a hope, that someday, in the future, we will do this.  The obstacles seemed insurmountable, and we believed that only if we won the lottery, could we make our dream come true.  It’s not that we believed we would win the mega jackpot, we didn’t have faith in ourselves to believe we could make it happen without a miracle occurring.

I think that is the single most important thing we want you to take away from our experience.   Walt Disney said it best:  “If you can dream it, you can do it.”  Believe in yourselves, and your ability to make your dreams a reality.    Please visit The Relocated Tourist for an awesome blog post The Dealings of a Dream, posted in May 2011, that really explains how to jump start your dream of relocation.   The only thing we would like to add is to say that our move is different than the Petermann’s, which will be different from yours, because we are different individuals with families who have different needs.  Don’t be afraid to customize your move to meet your needs, and don’t feel as if you have to do everything that we do.

Have a magical Disney day!

–Jen