The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 4

I have decided, after my little break last week, to continue on with my blog series The Trip of a Lifetime. Back in October of 2014 we were able to travel to Paris through the Make-A-Wish foundation and it was an unbelievable journey. In fact sometimes I sat back and think, "Did we really go to Paris?".   It was an amazing journey that I hope you are enjoying reading about. So let us continue....

On our fourth day in France we took a tour bus,  left the city of Paris and traveled to the Normandy section of France. I admit I loved it. Being out of the city and in the country reminded me so much of home. There were farms and pastureland with animals and everything was so green and pretty. The tour guide explained to us that it rains almost everyday of the year and that was why everything looked so green.

Our first stop was in Caen, France. This is the home of the D-Day Museum and the city is also the burial place of William the Conqueror. Unfortunately time did not permit a stop at the church he is buried in, but I did get to see it from the road. Here are a couple of pictures that I found online to share with you.

 

 The first thing we saw when we got to the museum was the 70th Anniversary D-Day memorial statue that had just been put in place four months earlier. 

The museum had so much information to read, so many things to see and we even got to go into a real bunker that belonged to Nazi General  . 

After a fantastic dinner of chicken, fried potatoes and salad we boarded the bus and headed over to the actual D-Day beaches. We stopped at Point Du Hoc, the place were the Army Rangers were to climb up and engage the Nazi's to take the attention off the beaches. Unfortunately they were late and the plan was discovered.  As you walk around you can still see the craters left behind by the bombs the Allied forces dropped over 70 years ago.

This is my oldest daughter down inside of one of the craters

 



We had a quick stop at Omaha Beach were I got a bag of sand to bring back home. It was so surreal standing there on the beach, seeing the memorial and thinking about all those brave men who stormed those beaches that day. Omaha was one of two American beaches, the other being Utah. The greatest loss of life was at Omaha.  I can only imagine the fortitude and courage it took for those soldiers to run into what they must have known would mean death for them.  It brought tears to my eyes and made me think of my good friend Charles Pike, who was a WWII veteran. He was one of the greatest men I have ever known, one of the Greatest Generation. 

We then continued to travel on past Gold Beach (one of the British beaches) onto our stop at the Normandy Cemetery. We had a brief time to spend here, but it was still overwhelming and emotional for me. So many of those markers bear no name, for that person was unknown. It makes me sad to know that someone's son never made it home and they have no idea where he is.  While there we also saw an entire wall of names of the missing, those they were never able to locate, even though they knew each man was present there. It makes you wonder what may have happened to them. 

Our next stop was what is referred to as Port Winston Harbor, named after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It was a man made port that allowed supplies and troops to be brought into France. 

(An archive picture of what the Port looked like in 1944).

 

 

We continued on with our tour and made a quick stop at Juno Beach (the Canadian landing spot). It was so nice to let the girls have a chance to  play on the beach and run on the sand along the English Channel. As we drove along the coast, heading back to the city we passed by Sword Beach (another British landing spot). 

All in all it was a very emotional day for me and made me even more appreciative of what our brave soldiers did that day and through out the entire war.  You see on that day, June 6, 1944, 156,000 soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy. Americans, Brits and Canadians all joined together to defeat the Axis power and bring liberation to France, Paris and Western Europe.  In total 4,413 men died that day (2,499 American fatalities and 1,914 from the other Allied nations) giving their lives for freedom  and justice for all mankind.

It was a long day, 16 hours to be exact and we were exhausted when we arrived back in Paris. We headed straight up to bed and decided to sleep in the next day.

 

 

To be continued.....

Dixie: The best dog ever

 

I had considered another blog about our trip, but instead decided this week to write about my precious little doggie Dixie Belle. I know that everyone will disagree with me when I say that she is the best dog ever, well at least the ones who have a dog will.

While growing up I had lots of dogs. We had run around the yard dogs, strays that we would bring home and then of course my daddy had hunting dogs. When I think back to the barking sounds that those old hound dogs used to make, it reminds me of my childhood. Those old hounds had beautiful voices.  Having grown up with dogs all my life I understand how important they are to families.

 I know that my Dixie is a member of this family.  I always tell people that she is my fur baby, my middle child. I can imagine what our lives would be like without her. I recently saw a story on the news about how pets have a positive influence on our lives, so I decided to do a little research on it.The following website, http://www.helpguide.org/articles/emotional-health/the-health-benefits-of-pets.htm, has as list of ways that pets contribute to our health and well being. I however don't need a study to prove that our Dixie is good for us, all I have to do is look back over the last 10 years she has been part of our family to see the influence she has had.

Here are just a few ways she has helped us:
1. Protection: She always lets me know when someone pulls into the driveway or is at the door.  It is good to know that she is always ready to warn us of something that she feels is dangerous.

2. Friendship: I have to say that she is my friend. She always listens to me and never talks back. Of course a person needs human friends, but it is so nice to have a friend that will just listen, sometimes that is exactly what you need.

3. Exercise: Many days we spend time outside throwing the tennis ball for her and watching her chase it, she never brings it back so the kids have to chase her, that gives them lots of exercise. She also tags along with me when I go walking in the evenings. It is nice to have her tag along and enjoy the outside with me.

4. Unconditional Love:  She loves me with an unconditional love, but sometimes I have to scold her. Like the other night when she stole a Twix candy bar and ate it. Her face was priceless! She knew she was in trouble, but she looked so pitiful up at me, I just had to laugh.  Sometimes she can be plum aggravating too. She follows me everywhere, sticking her nose under the bedroom or bathroom door waiting for me to come out.  It is nice though to know how much she loves me and just wants to be near me.

5. Comfort: This one is most likely the one thing she does that helps the most. I remember how she stayed right by my side after each miscarriage, how she was right with me when my grandfather passed away. How she stayed close to my daughter when she was going through her cancer treatments. Each time she was there to offer comfort to us the only way she knew how. She would just snuggle up to us and lay close, just letting us know she was there.


Of course she is getting older, her hearing is not as good, her eyesight is starting to fade, she sleeps a lot more than she used too and she is not as fast as she once was, (she is 10 in dog years and 70 in human years.) but she is still very important to us. As I sit here on the couch typing this blog she is curled up right next to me. She is keeping her eye out for her family, giving us love and keeping us heathly. What more could we ask for? She is by far the best dog ever.



"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"

 

 

 

 

 

 



Our Trip of a Lifetime: Part 3

On our third day in Paris we decided to sleep in, have a late breakfast and then head out to see the city. We took the metro and then boarded a Batobus for a tour of Paris by the Seine River.  The tour was one of those hop on/hop off tours, so we decided to hop off at the first stop and see the Love Lock Bridge.

 

Our tour guide the day before had explained to us that the city was in the process of removing the locks, but it was so popular that people had started puttings locks on all the bridges. My sister-in-law decided to buy one, even though she was not technically in a relationship. Here is how it goes: You buy the lock, place it on the bridge and then throw the keys in the Seine River.

 

 

 

I wonder just how many keys are at the bottom of that river? :)

 

After our stop at the LLB, we decided to walk to the Rodin Museum. While on the way it started to rain, but we had umbrellas. After about 45 minutes of walking, stopping for directions three times and waiting out a down pour we finally found said museum. It was so busy and crowded and the people working there were so pushy and bossy we decided not to even visit.  It was just 5 minutes later that I finally saw it on our city map and we realized we had only been about 10 minutes away from it to start with. At this point we decided to head back to the river cruise and again it started to rain. My poor sis-in-law had my cheap Dollar store umbrella and the wind was blowing so hard it turned it inside out. We laughed so hard we were crying. In the words of Aunt Na, "I got mascara all in my eyes, I'm going to be blind!" It was an hysterical moment. I am sure it will stick out as one of the best memories of the trip. 

 

When we finally made it back to the river we stayed on the boat almost the entire rest of the day. We rode up and down and up and down the river. It was my husbands favorite part. It was a slow relaxing day and the prefect way to see many of the main points of the city. We saw The Eiffel Tower,Norte Dame and so many other city spots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did decide to take the chance of getting off the boat one more time to go into The Lourve and take some pictures. We had already been into the musuem the day before, but had not seen the outside or the grounds. 

 

 

 

While we were waiting for the return of our boat, we saw that even in France they have the occasional stray, just like home.

 

 



 

The girls wanted to pet him, but we didn't think that was such a great idea and he just went  on this way.  Since she was bored and couldn't pet the doggie my youngest started investigating and found what she called a Parisian fairy house in the ground, she has such an interesting imagination. 

 

We continued on with our boat ride until it started getting dark, we wanted to take some dusk/night pictures of the Eiffel Tower.

 

We then took the metro back to the hotel and got a cheeseburger and fries in a little hole in the wall place. We had an early morning the next day so we went on to the hotel and to bed. It was a full and fun day in The City of Light.

 



 

 

To be continued.....





How I saved for Disney!

I need to start this post of by saying. that this is by far the hardest post I have ever written. Certain aspects were difficult to get out of my brain and in writing.  I hope none of it is to confusing!

I need to go ahead and establish the fact that I am a self proclaimed Disnerd! In case you are unfamiliar with that term, it just simply means I am a Disney nerd.  I love Disney!! I love watching the movies, shopping at their store (I even went to the one in Paris, France), and going to Walt Disney World.  We took our girls to WDW Christmas of 2011 and I have been looking forward to going back ever since.  If I had my way I would go to WDW every year, but that is just not something we can afford. In June of 2012 I got the bright idea to start saving up to pay for the next trip. I made up my mind we would not go back to WDW until we had saved up every dime of money needed for the trip.I have heard so many people talk about taking vacations, how much fun they had and then that they racked up huge credit card charges or depleted their checking accounts to do it.  I was determined not to be one of those people. That got my mind to working on ways I could save and ways to make extra money.

Ways I saved:
1. Automatic deposit into savings account: When I made up my mind to start saving for our return trip to WDW the first thing I did was go to the bank and open up my Disney account. I started having $25.00 a month automatically put into that account from our checking at the first of each month.  If I never saw it, I never missed it. I did this for the first year and then had it fixed to go into our savings instead. Now that our next big trip is being saved for I will go back to the bank and have that process started all over again.

2.  Change from purchases:  This step should be pretty self explanatory. I would pay for as much as possible with cash and then take my coin change and put it into a special jar (not the 52 week challenge jar) and then when I had enough I would deposit into my Disney account at the bank.

3. Sales/Price Match: The next two parts of the plan may be a little confusing for you, I am still not quite sure how I even kept them up. After each visit to the store I would come home and look at my  sales savings and price matches (price matching only applies to *Wal-mart purchases.). I would take all of them, add them up and divide them by 3. Then what ever that amount was would be written down in my little notebook under each months heading and then at the end of said month I would transfer that amount out of our checking into our Disney account. For example: Let's say it was July, I had went to the grocery store and with sales and price matches I saved a total of $12.00. I would divide that savings ($12) by 3, giving me an answer of $4.00.  I would then write that $4 down in my little notebook and at the end of July I would transfer it plus my other savings from our checking into our Disney.
*Wal-mart now makes this process so much easier with their savings catcher plan. You just put your receipt info into their system and they will check other competitors and give you the difference in price. No more holding up the line to price match!

4.Couponing: My couponing process works almost identical to my sale savings/price matching process, with one small difference. Instead of dividing my savings by 3, my coupon savings would be divided by 2. For example: Lets say on the same aforementioned July trip, I saved $7 by using coupons. I would divide that by 2, for an answer of $3.50. That amount would be written down in my notebook and then transferred from my checking into my savings at the end of the month. I know that in reality that the last two steps are still coming out of my checking, but I figured if I saved all that by working my tail off to coupon, price match and look for sales, I deserved to put some back for something special for us. Some months I would only put back a few dollars, but there have been some months that I would put back almost $100.00 using these two steps.
(I understand that the previous two things may not be possible for everyone. You may not be able to use them at all or may even have to start off dividing them by a higher number. I am just giving you the idea of what worked for us.)

5. The 52 week savings challenge:  This part of the plan was very easy to begin with, but then became very challenging as the year progressed. The point of the challenge is to save money that week for whatever week of the year it is. For example: Week 1 would be $1, Week 25 would be $25 and so on and so on. It was very difficult to save up those last 4-6 weeks with Christmas going on, but somehow I managed. I do plan to start this step over again for 2015, but will be switching up the weeks of June and December. I am hoping that will make saving easier this time around. (The following chart  is very easy to follow)

Ways I made extra money:
1.Consignment sales: This is a simple and easy way to make extra money. I have only used consignment sales to get rid of clothing/toys, etc., that my kids no longer have a use for. You can find a local store that will give you a flat price for all of your items, or like me. you can find a church/community consignment sale where you tag and price your own items and they sale them for you.  I don't always make a lot at these sales, but as I have said many times before, "Every little bit helps!".

2. Inbox Dollars: I signed up for a free account with http://www.inboxdollars.com/. The site has all types of ways to make extra money, but I just use it for the emails. All you have to do is click the purple confirm email button and you get two cents for each email. Yes, it does take a long time to build up your account, but for a few minutes each day I find it to be worth it. I have already redeemed my first amount of $30 and am working on my next.

3.Cleaning houses: I currently have one house that I clean, besides my own, my moms.  I do this twice a month and put back half of what she gives me for the Disney fund. The other half my cousin always gets for my twice monthly pedicures. Hey, a girl has to do something nice for herself every once in a while.

4. Picking up/Collecting cans: This is most likely the one thing my teenager hates, but my eight year old loves.   She loves the idea of cleaning up the earth and each can represents money to her. We have a couple of families in our church that keep all of their soda cans and bring them to us about once a month.  My daddy always picks them up for us on his walks and when we see one on the road side we try our best to get it.When we get a big trash bag full of cans we take them to the local salvage shop and sell them. It is never much, most of the time we will get around $1.20 per bag, but it all goes to help us reach our goal of Disney World.

5. Taking on extra baby-sitting jobs when possible: I have a full time job, stay at home mom and Tink. I keep this cute little 2 year old who is just the sweetest thing. The money I make for keeping her always goes toward the monthly tuition and piano bills for the girls. Every now and then I will get a phone call, text or message from someone who needs an emergency babysitter. If possible I always take the job and then put all of the money into the Disney fund.

6. Apply for and use a Disney Credit Card: I applied and received a Disney CC right before we went in 2011. I have let my mother and my church use it to order gifts and then paid it off at the end of each month. I have also used it to pay for this up coming trip and have been paying the bill off each month. By using this card I am earning 1 Disney Reward dollar with every $100 spent. Right now my account is at $100 Disney Reward dollars. I am planning to redeem them about a month before our trip to use while there.  I have never done this before so I am not sure how it will go. Hopefully there will be no problems and all my dollars should be put on  a Disney gift card. 

*There has been one more way I have gotten extra money for Disney, that doesn't really fall into saving or   earning.
 I ask for Disney gift cards for my birthday and Christmas this year. I was fairly certain that our trip was going to be taking place in 2015 and since the gift cards do not expire, with a late birthday and Christmas at the end of the year, asking for these as gifts made perfect sense.



I wish I could say that we meet our goal in December of 2014, but we are short $400.00. All in all, I managed to save a grand total of $4,100.00 in the last two and a half years.  All the money for Disney, gas and souvenirs was saved, but we are still saving up for Sea World. I have no doubts that I will be able to get that saved up before we leave. It feels so good to know that we can take this trip and not owe a dime when we get home!


It may be a vacation to WDW or to someplace else. It may be buying a new car or saving up for a down payment on a house. It could be anything that you are wanting to save up for and I hope that by sharing what I did it can help someone else reach their goals.

"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"