[SussexFamily]

Originally Posted by BerkshireBugsy

So parents – if you are sitting down I have some radical news for you. Are you ready?

Here goes!

Children have selective memories. There you go – I told you it was radical! My son (aka Niff) being a prime example. Ask him to tidy his room, empty / load the dishwasher, do his homework it gets forgotten. But if you told him you would buy him x,y miraculously that would get remembered. I guess – not surprisingly- the more expensive the item the more he is likely to remember.

This year – 2020 – my son turns 16 but when he was 4years old he found out that before he was born his mum and I had taken his sister to WDW a couple of times. At the time I told him one day I would take him so he could have adventures of his own He was four and I didn’t really expect him to remember. Major mistake on my part!

Fast forward until 2016 when I had to give the “your mum and I are separating" conversation you could see the cogs turning in his mind and after an hour or so he same back to me and said.
“This means you can take me to Disney dad like you promised all those years ago”

The thing was I wasn’t looking for a reason why I SHOULD do it but more of a reason why I shouldn’t. I was unsuccessful. I wanted this to happen so badly but left it a year or so before starting to look at the costs.

So when the time came to think about it more seriously Caj and I worked out that she not be able to join us so initially the holiday was booked for just Niff and I. Thankfully things changed and Caj worked out she could join us for the first week and so the booking was amended.

So the planning started. We would go for 2 weeks and Caj would be with us for the first week due to her family commitments. I have to admit to being a bit worried because I had never been on a plane with Niff before and he has the attention span of a nat so I hoped the IFE would keep him occupied. This would be the first time the 3 of us had been away like this as a new family.

To keep the cost down we would fly from LHR to MIA and then on to MCO. Because caj is a teacher going in term time was not an option so we decided to go the day after schools broke up in summer 2018. Caj is definitely an “on-site” sort of gal but I have spent far too much of my life in hotels due to my work so we booked a villa with a private pool in the Kissimmee area. I had stayed in the same subdivision (estate) previously many years ago so I knew roughly where it was although numerous roads have been added in the intervening years.

There is no doubt – in my mind anyway – that this turned out to be amazing holiday and I would love to do it again and – so he keeps reminding me -would Niff!

I feel blessed that I have such a good relationship with my two children and my dream is that one day I will be able to take my Daughter back to WDW so I can spend some magic time with both of my princesses!

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Great Start BB - I look forward to the next episodes.