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: “Stuff”


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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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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


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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.