I decided to journal my vacation because I am really bad at writing down “memories.” Feel free to skip over these posts and get to the meat in my site, but if you want to read about taking 6 kids on a family vacation to Disney World read on.
Day 1
We planned to wake up at 4 am and get on the road about 4:30. The car had been packed the night before and everything was ready to go. Usually we go to bed early, but my husband and I ended up staying up pretty late. At 3am boy #2 came in our room and flipped on all the lights…
We tried to go back to sleep, but I was wide awake. I made a command decision at 3:30 am to get up, take my shower, and start our trip. We left of the house around 4:15 am. The trip was relatively uneventful in the early morning. Unlike most children who groggily sit in the car, mine are wide awake from the first second. They are talkative, excited, and have no intention of sleeping peacefully for the first several hours.
We stopped around 7:30 for breakfast in southern Virginia. Our waitress had an accent thicker than molasses and she called us names like sugar and honey. We should have stopped at a fast food joint, but we chose Shoney’s instead. I thought the kids would fill up and perhaps eat some fruit. I was wrong as donuts were on the buffet, and most of the kids chose those over pineapple and grapes.
We got back in the car and encountered heavy traffic and bad weather. We were able to make it another 4 hours before we stopped for a bathroom break and gas. We ate lunch in the car and the kids happily watched movies.
At some point in the afternoon our four year old asked, “Are were there yet?” I wasn’t officially keeping track, but I think this was the 1,786,398 time this question was asked. I told her we weren’t and her reply was, “Well, that’s a problem for me because I really have to go to the bathroom!” We stopped again briefly for a potty break.
In Georgia we encountered heavy traffic and ended up sitting on I-95 for over an hour. We found a secondary road and finally got around whatever was causing the back up. We pulled into my parents driveway around 7:30 pm tired and ready to be out of the car. No one really slept on the trip, but seeing the grandparents gave the kids a small second wind. They all went to bed without a fight and are eagerly awaiting their cousin’s arrival this morning.
Today we plan our 5 Day Disney Adventure!
Having grown up in Northern VA and driving to Orlando to visit grandparents a bazillion times .. KUDOS to doing it all in one day while pregnant and with 6 kids!!! My kids are HORRIBLE travelers and there’s only 3 of them.
No long drives in our future!
Have a GREAT time!!!
I found your blog when I googled the Armed Forces Salute Ticket (I was trying to pass the info onto a friend). Disney World is one of our favorite places, so I hope you don’t mind if I follow your trip. I am still blogging about our trip from November!
Have fun!
Toni, whenever we go on a trip we are always up way to late the night before. Seems like we only get maybe one hour of sleep, two at the most.
Our last trip to Disneyworld my husband suggested that we just take the red-eye flight from then on since we never get much sleep anyway!
Have fun, girl!!!!
I found your blog last week and have been enjoying reading it! Have fun on your vacation, traveling all that way by car w/ all the kiddos is quite an accomplishment
I LOVE to read your memories.
Have a great vacation!!!
Hey there!
We live an hour away from the front gates of Disney. We have passes and have been there TONS (if not hundreds of times).
The weather is so wonderful right now and the crowds should be somewhat low.
There really isn’t any ‘short cut’ down here beyond 95 to I-4.
If you want, we know a couple ‘secrets’ for doing Disney. You can email me and I’ll email you some of them.
Hope you have fun planning your trip and will be saying prayers for a safe travel the rest of the way.
I love reading about Disney trips! It may be a really long time before I get to go again, so I’ll live through y’all!
I love all your frugal posts. We just did our budget tonight…let the frugality begin:)