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Vacation report

For everyone interested, I will be posting trip reports on the blog. I will post each day a little of what is happening. For the next 8-9 days will be the pre-trip report.

Me – Todd – 35 – United Methodist pastor, Disney nut, nerd, and all around introvert. If I don’t speak to you, don’t take it personal.

DW – Lisa – I’ll let her give her age – Office manager for the same church I pastor (my boss), sweetheart, Fantastic wife and mother. She is the better side of me most of the time.

#1S – Nick – 7 – My clone, only much better with people. Wants to be a food scientist.

#2S – Andrew – 4 – Lisa’s clone, only much funnier all of the time. Will likely end up being a character in a theme park.

This trip begins in 2005. November, if I am not mistaken. Well, no. It starts in 2003. See that was the first Bergman Family trip. We hastily threw together a trip to WDW. We were wanting to take a vacation (I rarely do so…take one…I want one daily). So we planned a trip for Fall. But then Star Wars Weekends happened. So we moved the trip up to May. We HAD to take #1S to see Darth Vader. He had lightsaber dueling to do. He was a huge Star Wars fan at the time. So it was a natural. So we took him to WDW to live Star Wars Weekend.

BIG mistake. Within 24 hours our wonderful child turned inward and wouldn’t do squat. NO lightsaber dueling. NO character interaction. NO rides. NO nothing. (English grammar snobs may want to turn away from this TR right now. I abuse the English language regularly with no shame.) So that trip was a flop. For other reasons as well.

But after that trip we knew we wanted to make another effort at the world. One thing stood between us and that goal – financial freedom. One of my areas of concentration in my ministry is financial counseling. And personal debt is a life sucking drain on freedom and happiness. We were normal people with lot’s of debt. My idea was to get rid of the debt and have lots of income freed up to do Disney again; every year; for the rest of our lives. Had the plan. Had every month broken down on how much we could get paid off. I knew within a couple of years when we could be back at WDW living large and without a credit card bill when we got home.

Nuh-uh. The plan got tossed. Life got in the way of idealized dreams of financial freedom. BUT we NEEDED a vacation. There are things that are priorities. So we planned on the next vacation. One thing I said had to happen though. It had to be paid before we left. So let the planning begin.

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