Kristen K's Pennies From Heaven! February 2015

Well - it's been crazy! With a lot of research I was able to answer some of the legal questions needed to determine if indeed I was able to fill out the claim forms and I was. I ordered copies of the death certificates, had a bunch of stuff notarized, and sent the full package in just this past Saturday (8/30). The post office said that it should arrive tomorrow (9/2). The insurance company said that after they have all of the documents that it should take 2-4 week for me to get a check. I still don't know what the benefit is because they have to see the death certificates before they can say that I am officially the heir. I'm going to give them a call on Friday and see if they will tell me what the benefit is.

Getting my Daddy's death certificate in the mail hit me pretty hard. I was embarrassed because it was like reliving his death all over. The death certificate didn't list the cause that I was expecting it to and there was a lot of crying.

So - still waiting, but progress has been made. Hopefully Friday I will have some good news!

We have a pulse!!

Oh my gosh. So, I talked with the insurance company today and like I thought - this is a very modest amount of money. BUT! I think I'm going to be able to squeeze out enough for our cruise and three nights at WDW before! It's going to be tight, but I'm going to play around with the numbers today and figure out how I can make this work.

My family is also insisting that I finally buy myself a DSLR camera so I need to work the budget in a way that I can have the camera I want and still get down to Disney to use it. So - a 3 night work trip followed by a 4 night cruise!

I've got to call DVC today because it looks like I'm going to have trouble getting a hotel room. The dates that we're supposed to be going don't have much availability when I look at it online. I may end up booking with us hotel hopping every night and waitlisting for a full stay someplace. That will be an adventure but I'm trying to look at is as just an opportunity to photograph more resorts for the blog.

Oh my gosh! It's really going to happen

So - obviously this trip is being called the Pennies From Heaven Trip.

Who: Kristen (old enough) & DD Tori (age 21)

What: 7 Night Land/Sea Vacation

Where: WDW Disney's Animal Kingdom Kidani Village / Disney Dream Deluxe Inside Stateroom (10A)

We've got a room! Member Services was able to get us a 1 bdr villa at Kidani for our first night, then we move to a studio also at Kidani for the second two nights. As far as moves go this one will take pretty minimal effort. The first night we have a savanna view, the studio though will have a standard view. Neither Tori or I really cared what sort of view we had this time and I wanted to try to save points. I had to borrow from my 2015 use year as it is.

When: February 20th through 27th, 2015

Flights: I'm not going to put too much effort into this for another 2 weeks. I'll wait until I get the final check so I know what I have to work with. Right now I think we're going to end up on Southwest out of Milwaukee unless I can get an amazing price on United out of O'hare.

Food Plan: At the moment we're looking at cheap breakfasts in room and only counter service dining while at WDW. That will help us keep the costs down at WDW. We'll also be sticking to the standard rotational dining while onboard the ship to help keep costs down.

Touring: I think that we'll do a monorail crawl or the Boardwalk on our first night, a park day on our second day, and pool/DTD on the third day. That should (I hope) give me lots of new material to shoot and share without stressing our budget too much. We'll probably walk around downtown Nassau a little bit just so my daughter can say she's been, but Nassau doesn't impress me and I'd be perfectly fine staying onboard rather than going ashore. I don't think we'll spend anything on shore excursions.