Saving money for that big family vacation can be tough. Especially affording Disneyland! See how our family is getting creative!
Written By Jay Kennedy, Traveling Islanders
I’ve been to Disney twice in my life, once was when I was a child and the other when I was in college. I vaguely remember both experiences… but I do remember it being a happy place.
I remember things like riding on the back of the bee from “honey I shrunk the kids” at Epcot centre, and the time that rabbit from “Who framed roger rabbit” popped out of a box and I wet myself. Awe, the memories.
It’s strange. Hardly remembering a place yet still having this deep longing and urgency to return.
It could be brought on by the fact that I have kids now who are convinced that’s where all the Princesses and superhero’s live. Or it could be those tear jerker Disney commercials of a dad and his daughter enjoying a fun filled magical day of meeting Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and even having a triple chocolate scoop ice-cream cone fall on the ground yet laughing and smiling about it.
COME ON!
If ice-cream falls on the ground no little girl is laughing about anything! Boy those Disney commercial creators are good, I’ll give them that.
Which brings me to chicken eggs. Yes, chicken eggs.
Do you want to know how many eggs it takes to get to Disneyland? Well… I’ll tell ya.
I was taught very early on in life that vacations don’t come for free and money doesn’t grow on trees. My dad said it best: “Son… if you want a vacation then go plant these pumpkin seeds in the ground and get to work”. That’s right, we grew pumpkins for Halloween to earn enough money to help with a family vacation.
It was a valuable life lesson that my father gave to me and now I am passing onto my kids, except I don’t have two acres to grow pumpkins. So it sounds like this: “Kids, if you want to go to Disneyland you need to STOP LEAVING THE PICKIN DOOR OPEN ON THE CHICKEN COOP”.
How many eggs do you have to sell to get to Disneyland?
Well, if you start off with one chicken coop and 12 chickens, and a racoon caries off two, so you buy 25 more… and lose two of those to an owl and two more to smothering because you bought too many chickens and they slept on each others heads… so you build a second chicken coop, and buy 32 more chickens… you might be getting close to a trip to Disneyland.
BUT if your kids leave the chicken coop door open one night and a West Coast Vancouver Island mink decides to raid the chicken coop like some sort of Disney cartoon… well that will set you back a little bit.
Did you know that a mink can kill chickens at a rapid pace because they don’t care about the meat, they just want to suck the blood out of the head like a vampire? Right. I didn’t know that either until I heard a commotion in the coop one night and found 10 of my ladies murdered in cold blood!
How many eggs does it take to get to Disneyland!?
I HAVE NO IDEA!
Two years later, two coups, 44 chickens left and we have enough for one and half plane tickets!
Disneyland here we come! Well, someday.
To be continued…
What creative things do you do to save money for a family vacation? Start the ball rolling with a comment below!
It’s actually not that hard to start a little backyard chicken project of your own. Check out what Amazon has to offer for starter kits:
Those poor Twilighted chickens! So glad you won't let a little mink come between you and your Disney dreams!...despite our resistance, Disney surpassed our expectations, and we did make some really cool memories with our kids, the shows and parades alone were worth the trip. We saved for our trip by somehow tying it into Christmas/Birthday presents and foregoing professional haircuts, for 19 years, (me, mom, gets one a year) and by breeding our dog, twice....both were blog-worthy experiences and I'm thankful we didn't have facebook for the first decade of haircutting mishaps! If they have a "kids fly free" sale, you are over half way there! On another note, we would love more of those eggs ! -
Sounds like you used some excessive creativity to get to Disney yourselves. :) I like the idea of using the hair cutting money toward it as well. Maybe I should add that to the fund every time I cut the kids' hair. and I'll need to keep my eyes open for those "kids fly free" sales. Though I haven't heard of them at all! -g -
Haha, I really enjoyed this post! I really love that you're teaching your kids to work for the things they want, instead of just having it given to them. Sounds like a fun family project as well. :) And oh gosh, the bloodbath caused by the mink sounds absolutely terrifying. I hope no more harm comes to your chickens! Good luck with making your goal! -
Hopefully our hard work will pay off...both in teaching our kids how to have a good work ethic and to get us to Disney! :) And yeah, those mink are not very friendly to say the least. -g -
Great post Jay! Those minks are lil A-holes - when we were volunteering on Denman Island our host got called around to his friend's house to shoot one that she had caught in a trap had been trying to get into her chickens, it hadn't succeeded but one of the chickens had died of fright. I didn't know about their blood lust either before then. -
So maybe mink coats aren't a bad thing? I love what you are teaching your kids about responsibility and working for what they want. I just want to know...who found the dead chickens and who cleaned them up? I wouldn't want that job! -
Who found the dead chickens? Which time? :) I think we've all taken turns at finding one dead and each time we are so sad about it. But I think when my daughter found the baby that got smothered because she was so little...yeah, that was the hardest one. And we all make Jay clean up the sad mess of it all. I'm not ready to hand over that responsibility to the kids just yet. -g -