Our 2002 Travel Page
Updated12/19/02
It’s A Small World With A Large Group of People!
The big news this year was our trip to Disney World with Jennifer’s side of the family. Grandma Claire and Grandpa Arthur March had a trip planned to go to Orlando Florida for Claire’s business. Before they knew what hit them, we had planned a major family trip plus with the entire family plus a few of Mom’s from her business.

We were able to spend 11 days in the Orlando area which meant at times we had anywhere from 12 – 23 people exploring the sights of the Florida vacation capital. Imagine for a moment 23 people in line for “It’s a Small World”!

Everyone loved spending time with the entire family. The Cousins who are already very close became even closer in the memory packed opportunity. Grandma and Grandpa got to see
Disney through the eyes of their Grandkids even though at times they found their eyes closed because we kept such a fast pace!

We also enjoyed the luxuries of staying in a condo all together. The kids slept on the floor, but the adults enjoyed all the comforts of home including a morning Latte provided by Jennifer’s brother who bought a cheap machine from Wal-mart after realizing the need to support the adults addictions!

Pin collecting at Disney was a HUGE event. Terry got on line before we left and got cheap pins at www.cheappins.com for the purpose of trading with all the Disney workers. Everyone ended up being relatively obsessed with this activity! We highly recommend this to anyone who goes to visit Mickey!
We would be wrong if we didn’t mention the family’s method of not getting lost and our system to visit the facilities. With up to 23 people the possibility of losing 1 or more people was strong, so Jennifer’s sister Meg purchased a large orange bike flag that drew attention and stares by everyone in the park. We were concerned that people might think this large pole was a weapon, but soon people discovered the wisdom of this marker. Everyone could always determine where our party was and it became the family’s anchoring tool! Meg also was the enforcer of the bathroom break rule. If 1 person needed to go EVERYONE had to go. This prevented the constant need to go to the bathroom. These two contributions earned Meg the family award for contributing the most to keeping conflict and frustration down!

Without Grandma and Grandpa’s help we could never have experienced this amazing opportunity. The activities will always be a treasured memory, but more because of who we spent this memory with.

Specific and quick Disney highlights by each family member:

  • Terry – The Lion King Show was an awesome treat as was Cirque Du Solei - another vacation favorite. Also the two signers at the Beauty and the Beast show who were amazing in their expressions and ability to tell the story of this stage production while the other actors were on stage acting out this Disney classic.
  • Jennifer – The lack of lines – the park was relatively DEAD and we walked onto almost everything many many times! The talking bush in Animal Kingdom where our family was harassed by two green plants that seemed like people in their interaction with us!
  • Kaitlyn – Spending time with cousins and eating at Prime Time Café – a very funny café that punished you if you did anything wrong. “A Happy Plate is a Clean Plate” was the motto of our waiter! Eating with Shamu at Sea World and talking to the trainers was another BIG memory!
  • Mikaela – I loved Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. This was the year to master those rides high in Fear Levels!! Along with everyone else Mikaela loved dancing in the fountains at Disney with Grandma. We got soaked, but after being rained on because of the seasonal hurricanes the fountains seemed like more fun than standing around in our rain gear!
  • Courtney – She was at the perfect age for the famous Dumbo ride! She also started her sea animal collection after spending time at Sea World. Unlike Kaitlyn, Courtney wants everyone to know that she did not like Tower of Terror, but Tom’s Sawyers Island was fun up until her crash (read her section to learn more about this event!)
  • Naomi – staying at the Seidman’s with Lexi and Peakaboo. She loved having us come home, but she was treated like a real guest in this home away from home!
Off to the Ozarks
This summer we took a great family trip to the Lake of the Ozarks with our good friends the Kay’s. The generosity of the Egger family allowed us to have vacations accommodations that were extraordinary. They loaned us their pop-up trailer. What luxury! As we were parked in a Wal-mart parking lot after driving late into the night, we realized the pure joy of using the Egger’s pop-up. We were able to sleep in comfort for free. As a family who is used to tent camping or worse sleeping in the car, this gift was a huge part of the enjoyment of this trip.
The generosity of friends continued once we were enjoying the Ozarks. The trip would have been a typical camping trip around a lake, but we were able to spend non-stop fun on the Kay’s boat. We water skied for the first time (or at least tried to water ski), went tubing, explored all the different coves, swam and sunned ourselves for hours on end. We’d leave in the morning on their boat and return after dark amazed the 9 of us could spend day after day together!
Eating was also a focus of the trip. (It is no wonder why we needed Weight Watcher’s.) Every meal was a feast! Something about cooking outdoors made things taste SO much better. Then on the boat, we’d be surprised if we’d make it 10 minutes before someone asked for a snack. Once the snacks were opened, eating would continue throughout the day. Rob and Jennifer could finish off the Pistachio nuts without any problem and if truth were told, Jennifer didn’t want to share the nuts with him at all (But they brought the nuts so she had to share!)

Normally the Lake of the Ozarks is very crowded, but we learned we hit the week right before their
summer season. The weather was perfect with only 1 rainy day where we enjoyed spending the day in the Kay’s motor-home playing games, dancing, singing and eating. On this rainy day we also explored some caves in the area and enjoyed some very tasty fish dinner and a local restaurant and our eating wouldn’t have been fulfilled without finishing the evening with some amazing frozen custard.
We also discovered Bucks while on the lake. Not only can you fill your boat up with gas, but you could also experience the best tasting hamburgers anywhere. This was our refueling place where we’d get gas, but we’d also get ice cream every day if not twice a day. It wasn’t until the last day we discovered the amazing hamburgers. Now we are trying to figure out a return trip just so we can return to Bucks! (Terry figures if we return he’d be able to get up on Water skies now that he has shed 50 pounds – at least at the start of trip before he gains 50 back while vacationing with the Kay’s!)
“Life is Good” - Partnering up with Jennifer’s Sister!
The trip to the Ozarks convinced us that we HAD to buy our own Pop-up. We looked used and could find some, but none our price range. Then after chatting with Meg and Jess (Jennifer’s sister and brother-in-law) we thought if the two families went together on a purchase of a pop-up we could afford new! It might have been the show room salesman or the reputation of Coleman, but we are now the proud co-owners of a little pop-up that easily sleep 5 and the two families have gone backyard camping together by using the “Add-A-
Room” feature we purchased so we could use the pop-up together! Meg and Jennifer grew up with a Motor home that their mother named “Someday”, so we’ve named our little travel home “Life is Good!”

We used the pop-up when we went to Lamar, Colorado for a State Swim Meet and ended up having some friends join us. This was awesome because we didn’t have to pay for any hotel fees, plus we camped for free next to the pool where the meet was. We woke up every morning to warm-ups. Walked across the parking lot to the pool and ate lunch, picnic style, in our campground which was the city park. The accommodations couldn’t have been better. (We could even use the Lamar City pool showers and bathrooms during operating hours!)

Our other camping trip was a spur of the moment trip up to Cripple Creek where we camped at a lovely campground. This was our experiment to see if we could do a trip spur of the moment with the pop-up. We are used to spending a lot of time gathering all the camping gear and prepping for all kinds of weather needs in a tent. We decided on a Friday we wanted to go to Cripple Creek – we easily left Saturday morning and had a great time. It snowed the night we spent up in the mountains, but we turned on the little heater, played games, ate inside and slept very comfortably with no problems. In our tent days the snow would have sent us home.

We have not used this pop-up nearly enough, but we have visions! Jennifer and Meg think they will take the kids camping on their own a few times this summer and if Terry can take some days off we have visions of some long trips back east. Camping at Disney is always a possibility and visiting family or friends could always be trip focus. Our problem is finding the time. Minimumally the pop-up will know short trips up to the mountains.

If you want to use “Life is Good” you are welcome to it. In order to keep the partnership equal, every use of the camper requires a $10 a day payment into the “Life is Good” fund. This way the repairs will be made with money contributed by those who use the camper. Feel free to get on the calendar if you need a very comfortable compromise between camping outdoors and sleeping in a hotel bed!