In my last post of 2023, I wrote: “We’re going to be more proactive in making our own magic when we might not otherwise be feeling it. Hopefully things will actually be much better, but I think focusing more on the good, even when things aren’t so good, will do us a world of good.”
Well, things have not been much better in 2024! I really don’t want to bog down this blog with our personal problems, but just as an example of one of the things we’ve been dealing with: my son’s car broke down in September; the one we replaced it with caught on fire in November; the one we replaced it with crashed in February; and the one we replaced it with died in March! He’s on his fifth car in a year. Our nerves are frazzled and our wallet weighs a lot less! And that’s just one of several items on our plate.
It’s been hard to come here and write about our life at Disney when our life hasn’t been something I want to dwell too much on and not something anybody would want to read about.
But, I made a pretty good point in that last post. If our life needs a little more pixie dust, instead of waiting for a fairy to fly by, we need to make our own magic.
And that’s what we did last week.
The search for the latest car for my son was not going well. It was hard to find someone willing to let us, in Florida, finance him a car in Tennessee. We eventually came up with a plan of buying one in Florida, driving it to him in Tennessee, then flying back. When we told our son, he suggested an alternate idea. He could fly down to Florida, spend the week with us (which happened to be his Spring Break), then drive it back himself. It was a great idea.
But when my daughter (whom we haven’t seen in over a year) heard the plan, she had an even better idea. She would drive him to Florida, they would both spend the week with us, then follow each other back in case of any issues with the new car.
I have some amazing kids!
And we had an amazing week making our own magic.
The kids were going to be happy just spending time with us and maybe doing some resort hopping and Disney Springs shopping. But we had some unused tickets we surprised them with, allowing us to all visit Epcot without having to spend any more money. My son worked at Epcot before the walls came down so he got to see all the new things at his old stomping grounds. And my daughter, a diehard Figment fan even at age 23, got to finally meet her childhood favorite character after all these years.
It was just the thing to recharge our wearly souls after a long stressful span of months.
As they drove home, as parents do, we worried about them during their long drive. But instead of stewing at home, we decided to keep the magical spark going by visiting Wilderness Lodge on a beautiful Saturday evening. We did nothing but relax, watch other families making memories together, and remember why we wanted to move here in the first place. Oh yeah, and we had the biggest bear claw I’ve ever seen in my life.
Life is good, even when it’s tough, if you make the most of it.
I haven’t liked dwelling on the negative, but I also haven’t wanted to put on rose-tinted glasses and gloss over things either. The point of this blog is to help others who might follow in our footsteps. So to put a positive spin on all this, maybe our first year here is a learning opportunity. And the lesson is this: If anyone ever tells you that moving to Disney will be nothing but magical, don’t fall for it! Moving here can make your life more magical, but real life is just as real here as wherever you came from.
