Disney World Part 1 - How the Hell Did We Get Here?!

About a year ago Lulu started asking us when we’d be going to Disney World. A few of her little preschool friends had gone over the summer, and she was so excited about going herself. Breaking the news to her that we just couldn’t afford a trip to Disney was too much for me to handle, so I broke out the tried and true parenting method we’ve all used one time or another. I lied.

I told her that Disney World actually had rules about who could visit and one of those rules was that the oldest kid in your family had to be seven. I know, right? But it was the only thing that came to mind that could explain why her friends V, C and A got to go and she didn’t. They all had older siblings, so that’s the first thing that came into my dumb brain. She believed me, as mommy never lies because lying is wrong (dear God), and seemed to move on, hoping that when she was older, she’d get to go. Me? I had no idea what I was going to do when she was seven, but I had dodged a bullet. For now at least.

Fast forward a few months and we have a new baby / crazy new life. I had just met, hired and scheduled a nanny for the summer and had recently returned to work from maternity leave. We had been refusing Easter trips and other long weekend vacations since I had used all of my vacation time during my maternity leave. I didn’t feel comfortable taking any time off for a while, especially since my work had been so awesome about my time with Tate. So when we got an email from Trent’s uncle telling us he was planning on renting a block of rooms at his Orlando timeshare so he could take his son and grandkids to Disney World, and did we want to come along, I immediately said no way, Jose. Free hotel rooms at Disney? Awesome, yes. But I just couldn’t take the time off. Also, the nanny we had just hired was going to have to take some time off for her sister’s wedding, so I was already going to have to take vacation for those days, and I just felt I couldn’t do both. So we politely told him “thanks, but no thanks” and didn’t mention it to Lu.

Two weeks later, our lovely nanny-to-be emailed me and apologetically informed me she had the dates wrong for her sister’s wedding. The days she would need off would actually be the same days that we had been offered the Disney trip. The stars began to align. I called Trent’s mom (who was planning on coming along for the trip if we did go) to discuss it further. We realized that the trip would fall on the weekend of Lucy’s 5th birthday and my mind started to race with possibilities. My amazing mother-in-law decided that she and her husband wanted to buy the tickets to the parks for Lucy’s birthday and they had a bunch of airline miles we could use for plane tickets.

How could we say no?

We couldn’t.

Then began the plan to tell Lucy, who had been asking what we were doing for her birthday for months. We decided to have her write a letter to Mickey Mouse, asking if he would mind making an exception to the “seven year old” rule for her, since she had done such a good job at quitting sucking her thumb and being an awesome big sister. Then we waited. Every day she’d check the mailbox, hoping for a response.

Two weeks before her birthday, we packed up a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll, a personalized DVD Disney had sent us and a letter from Mr. Mouse, himself. She found it on our front porch and totally lost her mind. It was one of my top five parenting moments, for sure (you can watch the video and see photos here). Less than 14 days later, we were on a plane headed to Florida for the best birthday a five year old could ask for. We are so, so lucky.