Every family needs to take THAT vacation. You know, the big one. Ours was a trip to Disneyland with six kids. We waited until they were all old enough and tall enough to go on all the rides. Kids ranged in age from five to fifteen, another must. Everyone would enjoy it.
Now, how to go about paying for this expensive vacation. We had refinanced our home, picked a pretty tight budget and planned for an off-season week in October. I didn’t want to stand in line in one-hundred-degree weather with all those kids. We found a coupon for a hundred dollars of an RV rental. At the time, Disneyland had a RV park just outside of it, with a playground, washer and dryers, and other conveniences. Most important was the regular shuttle that ran all day, taking you to the tram which zoomed you into the magical kingdom. Even with low mileage on the RV and one thousand miles to drive, we figured this would save us money. I spent months planning. I made lists of everything we needed. Planned all the meals. I had an entire notebook dedicated to the preparation of our one big family vacation. The great thing about homeschooling is you can make it fit your schedule. This was also Annie’s junior/senior year, since all the kid graduated at sixteen. It was now or never. We planned to visit the college she would go to, after doing a couple years of distance learning, as well as visit some Jer’s family on the way there. San Diego Sea World and a day at the beach would finish out the week before we headed home. A full nine days of vacation with eight of us in one RV. I considered color coordinated shirts, so we wouldn’t lose any of our munchkins but ended up foregoing that and went with fanny packs. My kids still joke about that. Each day all eight red fanny packs would hold snacks and water for us. Lunches were the only meal we ate in the park and maybe one treat, but man, those Mickey Mouse ice cream bars are expensive. Cell phones were just becoming popular and not something we owned. Instead, we used our son’s walkie-talkies. This allowed us to split into two groups if needed and still find each other. With all this planning, you would think nothing could go wrong. Ha. The Womack adventures continue in my next blog…stay tuned.