For Christmas, in lieu of presents and with my kids’ blessing, I instead pooled the Christmas money with vacation savings for an epic vacation. It had been four years since our 3 day Disney World trip so I wanted to make it count. The kids had no idea where it was we were going until Christmas so there was still an element of surprise.

I wrapped a countdown timer carefully set to go off at 8am June 4th. I put the timer counting down the seconds into the box and wrapped it with Harry Potter themed wrapping paper. I thought it would be a dead giveaway but eventually had to tell them we were headed to Universal Studios in Florida in 167 days. Let the excitement begin!

Mid-Spring I did have to add an hour to the timer due to daylight Savings time, but other than that the timer was spot on. It sat in our living room as a constant reminder and anticipation built as the number became smaller and smaller. We had a movie marathon weekend of Harry Potter and then started reading a few chapters a night of the Harry Potter book series. That might have been the most exciting part of this whole vacation, before it even happened.

I planned meticulously, purchased tickets and made lodging plans. I budgeted and saved, and decided on an all cash envelope system for food, gas, and souvenirs. We made it out the door as the countdown hit zero. First big hiccup was realizing while the charger from my son’s Occulus did charge the Mifi jet pack, the other side connection was also a USB-C and would not charge in the car. We were working with limited juice.

The kids graciously accepted this fact and we were on our way. We listened to Imagine Dragons on Spotify for about ten minutes before switching over to finishing up some episodes of the Great British Baking Competition. Noah had a brief interlude of playing Gumball’s “We’re on our way” song which had us all cracking up.

Switching back to music, we spent a long time in Texas, getting gas and Chick fil A on the other side of Dallas. I happened to pick the one exit under construction for miles and made a quick detour through the Wal-mart parking lot to get to the restaurant. Glad I adjust the gas budget to include more for this trip as average prices are around $4.50/gallon right now.

Our second stop for gas and bathroom breaks was outside Shreveport Louisiana. The drive through the trees was beautiful. I needed a little more active listening, so I switched Spotify over to NF while Noah logged onto this laptop for Minecraft and watching livestream of the Fortnite live season finale event. Ada alternated between her app to document all the different license plates we saw, games, and sleeping. We have found 26 states so far!

Just as we were about to cross the Mississippi, Noah and I heard a loud pop like the side of a pop can popping out in the trash can. A minute later, Noah noticed a small bullseye crack on the windshield on the passenger side. I knew we would have a few not-so-great things happen, so this was one of them. I called my Dad and confirmed it would be okay for the rest of my trip and I could deal with it back home.

The scenery got even better after the Mississippi River. Our GPS said under 30 minutes and our jet pack finally started beeping low battery. The Wifi held up until the end of our day though, so we weren’t deterred with the charger cord fiasco. We made it to our hotel room, ordered pizza for delivery and turned on the TV to find Jurassic Park playing.

After some yummy Pizza and cheese sticks from Pizza Hut, we changed and headed down to the pool. The water was warm and the pool wasn’t in the direct sunlight. When we arrived there was only one other boy and his mother in the pool. Noah managed to get my sun hat off and dunk me. We splashed until a truce and then dunked until another truce. Ada and I floated on our backs. I got out and let the kids play some more and got some great pictures.

Soon a couple of families with small children came and the pool was getting crowded. I convinced the children to end our swimming without much opposition, though Ada would have stayed hours. We came back to the room and saw Secrets of Dumbledore was playing. Ada called the first to change and slid the barn-style bathroom door shut. When she came out she struggled with the weight of the door when the entire door fell off the track and came crashing down on the wall across from the bathroom.

Noah and I together were able to lift up the extremely heavy door and get the wheels back on the track. I realized that one wheel was very loose whenever the door was shut to the bathroom. We finished changing without closing the door again and I went down to the front desk to let him know of the damages and what happened.

The front desk attendant was great and wished he could have comped our room for the night but I had already paid. In fact, I used my one reward night from booking ten hotel nights through Hotels.com so I had only paid $30. In place of that, he moved us to two neighboring king size suites. We spent the rest of the evening in one watching the movie and relaxing, and then I prayed and said goodnight to the kids in the other. This worked out well so I could stay up a bit later (though not much later as I was exhausted from nine hours driving) and wake up at my usual time of 4 hours after I go to sleep.

And so you find me here, on the couch of my spacious room at 4am excited to blog about our trip! We did pretty good on gas budget but food budget was a bit skimpy as I was trying to save most on travel days. I may adjust some from souvenirs budget to cover the difference.

Now to see how long I will wait in the quiet of this early morning to wake the kids and make the second leg of our journey to Celebration, Florida!