Disney!!

One of the many things I've learned as an adult - peer pressure never goes away.  I thought once I got out of the teenage years and the college years, peer pressure would just fade away.  Nope.  It doesn't.  As an adult and a parent, I sometimes feel like peer pressure is even more rampant.  Case in point:  Disney World.  Seriously.  I mean, nearly all the families we know have gone.  Usually multiple times.  Everyone raves about it.  Talks about how magical it is.  Makes it seem like it HAS to be a bucket list item for every family.  Or at least that's the way my brain heard it! (and that's not a bust on all our friends that love disney!! I promise!)

Well, if you know us, you know we love our beach vacations.  And by vacation, we mean heading out to the ocean at about 10 a.m. with lunch and all snacks in tow and not returning inside until 7 or so.  Vacation = vegging out completely.  So walking miles and miles around a theme park with thousands of other families just wasn't an even trade for vacation time.  But still I felt the pressure to take the boys and go as a family before we hit the high school years.

So last year on my New Year's goals, I listed Disney as a place I wanted to visit.  I talked to Bowdie about it.  We decided we needed to pull the trigger.  Our friends Chris and Kelly go every other year, so we talked to them about tagging along.  They were all for it.  And I was all for going with a family that knew their way around what was probably one of the most intimidating locations I've ever been to!

So we kept it a surprise from the boys.  We booked our lodging, ordered our magic bands, made our restaurant reservations and reserved our fast passes.  We decided to let them boys know on Christmas eve when they do their brother gifts.  I got each of them a $20 disney gift card and wrapped it up.  I printed out 'Are you ready to go somewhere magical?' on a piece of cardstock and cut it apart like a puzzle.  They opened the box, put the puzzle together, and then opened their gift cards.  They were happy enough ... but when they realized we were going with the Stricklands AND they got to miss 3 days of school to boot - well that's when the magic really happened!!!  The video reaction is completely priceless.  (but because we print out our blog into a book, i'm not adding it here)

So Mickey ... here we come! :)