Travel | Wishes And Pixie Dust

July 23, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 3 Comments

So What Does Mickey Say?

One of the blessings of being able to access social media 24/7 is the ability to instantly connect people with happenings as they occur. It’s been fun to document our travels down to Florida using Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla and Foursquare. It also provides a way for you to “follow us” and experience our journey as well!

Last Christmas we purchased at Walmart a mountable Mickey Mouse that utters different sayings, such as “Hiya pal!”, “Hotdog!”, and “Oh boy! It’s going to be a great day!” Before our trip we mounted Mickey on our dashboard, and Ben takes great delight in saying: “So what does Mickey say?” at different intervals. It’s a cute way to include the Disney magic as we journey down to Florida.

Mickey in Chicago:

Mickey in Indianapolis:

It was a loooong drive through Indiana! One of the interesting things we noticed involved the landscape. Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana are pretty much the same, flat land, but once you enter Kentucky, the difference is noticeable with the huge hills, trees, and different terrain:

Just wanted to put a quick note in here regarding the tolls on the way down. We paid $2.50 in Illinois: $1.50 at Lake Forest, and $1.00 at the Edens. We paid $3.50 for the Chicago Skyway, $1.50 at the Indiana Toll Road, and $.60 just after Gary. $8.10 in total, which is quite a bit more than we remember paying two years ago. We had put our toll money in an M&M tube, something that we’ve used in the past for the kids to do pressed pennies at Disney, and today remembered why it’s not such a cool idea. All the quarters fell out of the tube! Apparently the clasp is enough to hold M&Ms, but not heavy items like change.

We had a fun picture to share. We saw this sign after we left the Kentucky Welcome Center:

Another Clermont sign! And speaking of welcome centers, we do believe Kentucky has the absolute nicest welcome centers of any state we’ve traveled through. It puts Wisconsin’s rest areas to shame. 😉

We wanted to note a couple of items that have made our trip so much easier. These were mentioned in an earlier blog, but the book The Next Exit provides valuable information about what restaurants and gas stations are at what interstate exits, and it allows you to plan upcoming rest stops. The other item is the Verizon Navigator (GPS) function on the iPhone. Once you are located in a city, it gives you all possible options in terms of shopping, restaurants, gas stations, etc, and will navigate you there. While very helpful on the way down, it will prove invaluable once we arrive in Clermont. Verizon charges an additional $4.95 for their GPS service, but we find it easier and more functional to use than Sprint’s version. (Currently we have phones from both providers.) The only negative we can say about it is the announcer’s voice is a little hard to hear. As of yet, we haven’t figured out if there’s a way to make it louder.

The drive, while long, was so much more enjoyable because we were doing it at a more reasonable time frame. And the postcard idea is working out brilliantly. The kids are really getting into the idea, and it provides a great way for them to document the trip as well as work on writing skills. But shhh, don’t tell them that!

Off to bed for tonight– be sure to follow us tomorrow as we journey through Tennessee and Georgia.

July 17, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 3 Comments

Planning For The Last Week

We went to Fleet Farm today to pick up a couple of items to get the house ready for the next set of renters, and as we pulled in to the parking lot, we saw this vehicle. We immediately thought of Fillmore, from Cars:

“I’m tellin’ you, man, every third blink is slower”

We have yet to see Cars 2 in the theatre; we may take it in this week once everything slows down a little… but perhaps we’re misguided thinking things will slow down! 🙂 We’re finished packing in the kitchen except for a few last minute items. An unexpected expense we hadn’t considered is the meals out we’ll be eating this week; plus the purchase of the disposable plates and bowls, which granted, isn’t a huge expense but it’s still one, nonetheless. Wednesday we plan to eat at Tucker’s, a family and local favorite:

They have the absolute best popcorn, second only to Walt Disney World, of course.

Thursday we plan to eat at Pizza Ranch, one last time with Nick; he called it a last meal, but that just sounds so final, as we know we’ll be back to visit:

In our opinion they have the absolute best fried chicken that you can find. The pizza is good, too, but definitely go for the chicken.

Friday, of course, is our departure date, and we plan to have our dinner in the hotel room. For road trips we always pack ham sandwiches from Festival Foods, and other assorted goodies for a picnic lunch; so we plan to do this again. It’s tradition, and you don’t mess with tradition. LOL

Right now our plan is to leave here by 3:15pm on Friday. We anticipate that the movers will be done by noon, and our landlord comes at 3:00 to check us out. We hope to be in Pleasant Prairie by 6:00, which will allow us to eat and perhaps check out the outlet mall as well. We will have internet access all the way down, thanks to the hotspot activation on the cell phone, so we will be able to post blogs nightly and keep you updated. We will also be posting updates using Twitter and Facebook along the way.

Enjoy your Sunday ♥

July 12, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 4 Comments

To Dream Is To Believe

A common theme in our blog posts have referred to how brutal Wisconsin winters can be; we won’t revisit that topic, but reference it in the fact many Wisconsinites dream of moving to Florida, especially in the months November through March. To us Florida is an exotic location, with sunny skies and palm trees, while we sit with piles of snow and sub-zero temperatures. As we finalize our move, a recurrent comment we hear from people is: “I’m jealous”, mainly made in reference to not having to survive another winter.

It’s easy enough to observe us and feel like we have it made; to feel jealousy over the fact our winters in Florida will be spring weather in Wisconsin, and that we’ll never have to shovel again. The truth is, we consciously made the decision to make this our reality, and we have worked hard to make it happen. It has not been an easy road for any of us, but we feel the effort is well worth any sacrifices we have to make in the meantime.

One thousand, two hundred and eighty seven days ago we first dreamed the dream, of relocating to Florida close to Walt Disney World. We write out that number in words because it really seems surreal right now that we are only ten days away from realizing our dream. There were many moments of doubt that we experienced. The first twelve to twenty months it was merely a dream that we talked about; something that would occur in the future but we had no idea when, and we did nothing towards making it a reality. It seemed so far away in the future that it seemed pointless to expend energy at that point in time. The basement boxes and just the accumulation of possessions that we owned really overwhelmed us as where to start, so we did nothing. After our Disney trip in 2009, we were more enthusiastic than ever about moving to Florida and this is when we let the kids in on our dream, that someday we would move to Florida.

The dream first became real to us last summer, in June 2010, when we first set a date of September 2012 and started the blog. Even though we now had a date, it still seemed like it would never happen; and we didn’t really believe it would happen. How much difference a year makes! Since that time we backed the date to September 2013, and then in January of this year, we decided to take the plunge and move this summer. “Do you really think we can do it this summer?” is the question that propelled us forward.

We can’t say how many times we doubted ourselves, but it was a lot. Over the past six months since we made the final decision, we haven’t doubted our choice, but there have been moments of fear: fear of the unknown, fear that what we are doing is not in the best interests of our children, and fear that we will fail.

We are now ten days away from leaving Wisconsin. We can honestly say that this is the best decision we could have made for our family; our kids are uber-excited about moving to Florida, and while we won’t be traveling with as much money as we’d like (thanks to car repairs); we are very thankful we were able to take care of the repairs now and not have them happen along the way. We won’t be able to purchase as much furniture right away as we had previously planned, but we’ll make it work. An empty, unfurnished apartment in Florida is way better than our current home in Wisconsin, and because it is an apartment our expenses will be less than if we rented a house: we won’t need to do lawn care, maintain a pool, or spray for bugs; and we will have access to a business lanai (with wireless internet and printers) and fitness center, should be choose to utilize these amenities.

Thanks for following along~ we appreciate your comments and feedback!

July 6, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 3 Comments

Go The Distance

It seems wild to us to think we only have sixteen days left in Wisconsin. When we made our decision back in January to move , it certainly was an easy one to make, given the blowing snow and bitterly cold temperatures, and of course our love for Disney. In the past six months we have overcome obstacles; we share this bit of information because we want to let you know that it is impossible to plan a move across several states without hitting at least one or two roadblocks along the way. Things will not always go as you plan, you will have bad days and moments of “why did I ever decide to do this?” pop into your head. We’re here to let you know it’s okay, keep moving forward with your dream, and deal with the obstacles as they occur.

One such obstacle is our car. We brought it in to the shop in March for $700 worth of repairs, $900 in June, and yes, we are bringing it in again in July (tomorrow). As we mentioned earlier, the check engine light came on and while that didn’t necessarily alarm us too much, the large puddle of coolant on our garage floor that leaked after we drove around for a couple of hours did. We are hoping it’s nothing serious, and we would appreciate prayers on this issue, because we really don’t want to pour more money into repairs, as this is money that is not buying furniture for us when we move.

One of the things we are most looking forward to once we are in Clermont and inside our apartment, is to just enjoy the moment, knowing there are no boxes to pack, no rooms to clean, no furniture to unload, and nothing to do except realize that we did it. That is the moment that we hold on to now, that helps us to get us through these next two weeks, whatever they may bring.

June 30, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust 3 Comments

Hold On Tight

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.