Well, all that Disney talk on the boards, and lots of free time yesterday, I started working up a budget for Disneyland.

Gosh, when you have to pay for your own room (which we haven't in AGES) and pay for 2 adults and a kid, well, it starts to add up pretty fast.

We had our dream wish list and we started to cut it down fast.

I came up with about $1500 for a full week in So Cal and maybe $700 for a 3-night trip to just Disneyland. That is before searching out discounts and frugalizing it, but just kind of looking at May room rates and park admission prices, etc.

Dh said $1500 for a week (for 4)wasn't bad. For one we won't have airfare. He probably has a point, but I said, "are you out of your mind?"

As a young single chick I did a lot of traveling around. You know, you stay with friends and you used the student discounts. Take away all those free bonuses and start to multiply it by 2 or 3 and 4 and it is amazing to me how expensive vacation is. !!!!!

I mean Disneyland is one of our cheap staples. We'd drive up, stay at a cheap hotel, enjoy the day, and drive home.

So this is why this vacation will be SO nice. We decided for D-Land we would take a good solid 3 nights. 2 full days to drive (it's a good 6 hours each way). 2 days to go to the park. Sounds absolutely divine!!!! If we can pull it off for $500-$700, so be it. Not bad.

Incidentally, part of the reason we are going this year is LM is free AND he REALLY enjoyed Disney World (which I didn't expect at this age).

So dh and I did wonder aloud how much cheaper the whole week long/add San Diego thing really is without a 4th head to pay for. I really wanted to check out LegoLand down there which is $200 admission just for the 3 of us. Imagine when we have to pay for LM too.

So we did discuss that we should try to do the whole week thing while it is cheaper.

This is like our last hoorah before BM starts school. We wanted to take one last vacation without school schedules to work around. & we chose DL when I was jealous at all I missed when they were in Florida. I didn't expect LM to do much but be too scared to go on anything and too little to enjoy. What do I know? LOL.

Anyway, it all depends on my raise. It kicked in Jan. 1 but I STILL do not know what it is. I probably would have found out Friday if not for the horrid weather. Instead I find out Tuesday at the earliest.

Oh and there is that pesky $1k or so in taxes I will owe April 15th. So yeah, I think we are just doing Disneyland. BUT it will be a pretty nice/luxurious vacation for us. It will be nice not to have to rush.

If I get a huge raise and work more overtime than expected, we can talk about making a week of it. We'll see. It will be a "play by ear" thing.

We figured we'll drive down on a Monday night and go to the park Tues/Wed. I HATE crowds. You couldn't drag me there on a busy day. So like I said we have to enjoy without school schedules. One last year of complete freedom!

& I realize for all I gripe about high cost of living, there is a lot of good to it. We can drive to some pretty nice vacations rather easily, which saves much on the vacation front. I mean a day to Monterey or Tahoe we can stay with family, and we have so many day trips around here to enjoy. Or a days' drive to Vegas, Oregon Coast, or San Diego. Etc. We have it really good in that regard. I think in the grand scheme of things we can vacation pretty well for little money. & so this is maybe one reason people pay so much to live here.

Dh keeps telling me people go to vacation to get away and he likes to make home his oasis. He wants to stay home and enjoy 350 days+ of the year rather than only enjoy one week every year. I think he has a point. Just kind of along those lines too.

We're not big vacation people as a whole, so the whole thing is just a shocker to me!

Might as well stick with the free vacations. I don't think I fully grasped how much money we were saving on those trips. !!!!!! I mean I know how much my dad spent on Japan for me and it wasn't $1500! Of course taking all 4 of us would have put that trip to $5k+.

& then MIL gets all her free room and flights from her miles and timeshare points. But I am sure she shells out a lot to get that.

We still might luck out with a free room on this trip. We'll see. Dh didn't want to ask, but last time we had to pay a cancellation fee because she insisted she had a room for us. I told him, just ask so we can avoid the cancel fees later. Plus it was a REALLY nice hotel. I could go for saving $300 and staying at a really nice hotel.

P.S. the weather has calmed down here much. It is SO quiet.