Posts Tagged With: disney world

Family, Friends and More Disney

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Heather Gebbia

Happy New Year everyone! I guess it’s about time I write an update about what we have been up to lately. Since my last post about our month at Fort Wilderness in September, we have been spending lots of time with friends and family in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as more time at Disney.

We spent most of the month of October near my sister in GA at 2 different Army Corps of Engineers (COE) parks. COE parks are some of the nicest in the country and there are plenty of them near Woodstock, GA.

First we stayed at Victoria Campground then moved over to McKinney Campground. Both parks are amazing with gorgeous views of Lake Allatoona and beautiful sunsets. At McKinney we had a really incredible campsite on a peninsula.

Sunset at Victoria Campground

Peninsula site at McKinney Campground

While at Victoria Campground my parents came down to visit. We went up to the town of Helen, a cute Bavarian-styled mountain town where we took some family pictures and played mini golf.

Next we went back to Disney for Halloween. Fort Wilderness Campground is our favorite place for trick-or-treating, and we love to rent a golf cart and ride around looking at all the decorated campsites.

My sister came down to visit after Halloween and we had a blast visiting the Disney parks with her.

After Disney we headed up to our hometown of Fernandina Beach and stayed at Fort Clinch State Park. Unfortunately it was rainy, windy and cold the entire week we were there except for the first day. At least we were able to play on the beach and get some pretty pictures the first day.

Chris and the boys playing football on the beach

The only sunset we saw in Fernandina Beach that week

We were also blessed with a beautiful moonrise that night

Since moving away from Fernandina Beach almost 5 years ago, our good friends the Norstrems try to meet up with us somewhere on the road. They did not get a chance to do that this year, but instead they added an RV spot to their new home. What a blessing to be able to go and park our house in their yard for a week!

We absolutely love this family, and it was so much fun to spend the week hanging out with them, playing games and riding horses. We miss them when we’re traveling, but always look forward to seeing them again when we head back to Florida.

Chris and Ken back to their cribbage games

I loved riding horses with Kelli and Emma

Jake and Jesse enjoyed riding the horses as well

After a quick trip to Charlotte for Thanksgiving with the family, we headed back to Disney. Halloween lights at Fort Wilderness are great, but to me there is nothing quite like the campsites decorated with Christmas lights. We rented another golf cart and I loved riding around the camping loops to see all the beautifully decorated campsites.

While we were there the new ride in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios opened. In all of our years visiting Disney, we have never seen anything like the opening of this new ride, Rise of the Resistance.

I have to admit, it is pretty amazing. The ride experience is close to 20 minutes long, and consists of multiple immersive ride systems. Getting on the ride is no easy task either! You can’t just show up at the park and get in line to ride, you have to join a boarding group at the crack of dawn.

We got to Hollywood Studios around 6:30am. The park was already open because there were massive crowds showing up before the park even opens to be able to experience this new ride. As soon as you go through the ticket gate and everyone in your party is in the park, you can open the My Disney Experience app on your phone and join a boarding group to ride Rise of the Resistance.

Once you’re in a boarding group, you can see updates in the app to let you know which boarding groups are currently loading. You’ll also get a notification when your boarding group is able to get in line.

The week we were there the boarding groups were all gone for the day between 7:30 and 8:30 each morning. That’s why we had to get there at the crack of dawn just to get in a boarding group. The trouble was worth it! We even went back and did it again the next day.

We also got to visit with some friends from our Nassau County Homeschool group for a field trip to Sea World. My friend Holly and her kids stayed with us at Fort Wilderness for a few days, but unfortunately we never took any pictures. One evening we had a nice visit with Kirsten and family, and thankfully Kirsten remembered to take a picture. 🙂

After a couple of weeks playing at Disney and enjoying the Christmas lights, it was time to head back to Charlotte for lots of family fun and games, and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior.

I hope everyone had a blessed holiday season! Until next time, I’ll leave you with this random picture of Fat Cat. The expression on her face is so funny to me. It’s her typical “leave me alone, I have no use for you” expression. 😉

Categories: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina | Tags: christmas lights, disney world, Florida, fort wilderness, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, Georgia, grand design momentum, grand design rvs, halloween, hollywood studios, mckinney campground, moochdocking, rise of the resistance, rv travel with kids, star wars galaxy's edge, victoria campground, woodstock | Leave a comment

Disney’s Fort Wilderness and a Hurricane

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Heather Gebbia

If you haven’t figured this out yet, we are a family of Disney fanatics. Every year when we head back east, you can be sure we will spend some time at our favorite campground in the country — Disney’s Fort Wilderness.

In my last post I wrote about our journey back east, and how we arrived back to Florida just in time for Hurricane Dorian. We spent a few days with our good friends the Reyes family who are always so gracious to allow us to park at their house whenever we’re passing through the area.

While hanging out with the Reyes family, we kept an eye on the forecast for the hurricane. We were scheduled to arrive at Ft. Wilderness on Labor Day, and by the Saturday before it looked like the hurricane would be turning up the coast and not have much impact on central Florida. So we went ahead with our plans and continued on to Disney on Labor Day.

Since leaving Montana we traveled 2,700 miles, and you can imagine we were so ready to finally get somewhere and stay for awhile. We got into our site, got set up and were so happy to finally relax and not move for a month. But then, not 2 hours later, we got the news that Ft. Wilderness is closing due to the impending hurricane and they are re-locating everyone to the Disney Resort hotels.

What?!? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Disney hotels are amazing, but we just drove 2,700 miles to get here and we really don’t want to pack up and move again anytime soon. But then my Disney Pixie Agent, Tabitha worked her magical pixie dust and got us into a Disney Boardwalk Villa. I think it also had a lot to do with God blessing us beyond anything I can ask or think.

My favorite Disney Pixie agent, Tabitha & I at Chip & Dale’s Campfire Sing-a-Long

Disney’s Boardwalk Resort is incredible, and one of the few Disney resorts we have never stayed at. We always wanted to, but it’s just so expensive! You can imagine we were all super excited when we found out where we were being evacuated to.

Pool and water slide at Disney’s Boardwalk

The time to relax and stay put for awhile would have to wait. Ft. Wilderness instructed us to park our RV in the Magic Kingdom parking lot along with all the other RVs that had to evacuate the campground, and we were going to the Boardwalk! All Disney hotels are pet-friendly when a hurricane is approaching, so even Fat Cat got to come along on this adventure.

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Ft. Wilderness evacuees parked at Magic Kingdom

We certainly looked like the Beverly Hillbillies strolling into that fancy hotel with our grocery bags full of everything we had to empty from our fridge, a laundry basket full of dirty laundry (because our villa had a washer/dryer in it — free laundry!), a litter box and a very squirmy and unhappy fat cat.

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I don’t even know how to caption this!

Once we got settled we enjoyed a fabulous 3 nights at the Boardwalk, and the storm hardly affected us at all. One night it got a little windy and rained a bit, but that was it. The night of the storm, all the Disney parks were closed so our hotel made all arcade games free for the night — the kids loved that!

Disney’s Boardwalk

Sunsets at the Boardwalk

My parents were planning to head to Orlando that week, and since the storm was not going to affect central Florida, they went ahead with their plans. It was so much fun to have them come for a visit!

Fat Cat had her own adventure while we were there. On our last night, we headed out to dinner with Mom and Dad, and when we got back to the room, we couldn’t find the cat anywhere. She’s been known to hide, but we really looked everywhere and thought that somehow she got out of the room. We even thought she may have jumped off the balcony, and we were on the 3rd floor!

Fat Cat on top of the fridge, before she got lost

Finally, after hours of searching, Chris heard her collar jingling behind the kitchen cabinets. Apparently, she climbed up on top of the cabinets, found an opening and climbed down inside the hole. Once she got in there she couldn’t get out. Chris had a heck of a time trying to get her out, but finally succeeded. That cat sure knows how to get herself into trouble!

Kitchen in the villa — notice the arrow pointing to where Chris found the cat

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This is Fat Cat stuck in her hiding place

This is the hole on top of the cabinet she crawled into — forgive the dusty mess, it’s not my house. 😉

After 3 nights of living in the lap of luxury, Ft. Wilderness re-opened and we were able to move back. The morning we got back it was weird to see the campground so empty. Of course, it didn’t take long for it to fill back in.

Empty camping loop at Ft. Wilderness

We were so happy to finally be settled in our site at our favorite campground! And we stayed for most of the month of September. Jake and Jesse both have September birthdays, and that’s where they wanted to celebrate.

We were planning to get another Disney parks annual pass starting around Halloween, so for September we got a water parks pass instead. That worked out well since it was so hot, and it was great to spend so much time at Disney’s Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon.

September was a fun month of celebrating Jesse’s 13th and Jake’s 15th birthdays, and seeing friends and family again.

Danny & Kim came down to visit from Fernandina

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The Lundy’s came to hang out with us at the Campfire Sing-a-Long

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Margie and I with Chip & Dale

Jake is not quite old enough to drive yet, but he liked pretending on the golf cart. Notice a strange Fat Cat in the back seat with a cute Jesse Bear.

Categories: Florida | Tags: blizzard beach, campfire sing-a-long, chip and dale, disney world, disney's boardwalk, Florida, fort wilderness, ft. wilderness, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, grand design momentum, grand design rvs, orlando, rv travel with kids, typhoon lagoon | 4 Comments

Wintering in Florida

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Heather Gebbia

Like many fulltime RV’ers we spent most of the winter in Florida. After spending the holidays with family in North Carolina we headed back to our hometown of Fernandina Beach, FL to stay at Ft. Clinch State Park in January. Most of the time we were there it was very cold, well by Florida standards that is. I know most northerners would question my definition of “cold”. We woke up one morning to find that the water coming into the RV from the outdoor spigot had frozen. We’ve traveled for 3 years and that has never happened. How ironic that it would happen in Florida of all places!

In spite of the cold we had a blast hanging out with friends, playing lots of games, enjoying lots of campfires and watching gorgeous sunsets.

We were so happy to be in town to attend one of our best friend’s surprise 50th birthday party!

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Good friends Danny & Kim

So much fun with friends…

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Game nights with Mimi

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Catching up with Kym

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Camping with Kelli and the rest of the Norstrem family

One night while watching the sunset we were so excited to see a couple of dolphins playing so close to the shore. Photo credit to Kelli for these beautiful sunset pictures.

After almost 4 weeks in Fernandina we headed down to another one of our favorite places: Disney’s Ft. Wilderness campground. This time my parents, sister and brother-in-law joined us for some Disney fun.

Later in February we moved on to Three Flags Thousand Trails where some good friends were staying. In the past I have shared pictures of some of the incredible campsites we have been blessed with that included lots of space and gorgeous views. Well, sometimes we end up with a site with a lovely view of the neighbor’s camper with barely any room in between.

Jake and Jesse with their good friend Gavin

The sites at that park were pretty close together, but thankfully the neighbor was really nice. She brought treats over for the kids often and even told us we could use her golf cart anytime we needed it. We didn’t take her up on that, but I have to say she was one of the nicest neighbors we have ever had. In addition we got to hang out with some other Fulltime Families which made our stay there really fun.

Even though we didn’t have a lot of space between our campers, our back yard was pretty amazing with cows coming to visit us every day.

From there we moved on to “moochdock” at a friend’s house. We met these friends on the road 3 years ago. They recently bought property in Florida with a very nice, large RV spot.

Keith and Michele’s house

We went kayaking in Silver Springs while we were staying with them. That was lots of fun until we realized we missed a turn and ended up 2 miles downstream which meant we had the strenuous job of paddling back upstream that far. I was so thankful Keith tied a rope to my kayak and helped tow Jesse and me back!

Peaceful and beautiful while we were still heading downstream.

Next we spent a quiet weekend at a beautiful state park on the Suwannee River.

Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park

Lastly we attended our 6th Fulltime Families rally in Madison, FL at one of our favorite Jellystone Parks. We used to go on weekend camping trips to this Jellystone years ago before we started traveling fulltime. They have a really awesome water slide and lazy river. The entire week the boys were so excited for them to open the water park. It was a chilly week, but the campground promised they would open the water park for the rally no matter how the weather turned out.

Well, the campground kept their promise and many of the kids braved the cold to enjoy it one afternoon. The outside temperature was in the 60s, and I have no idea how cold the water was but based on the blue, shivering lips of most of the kids it was quite cold!

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Photo Credit: Brooke Foster

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Photo Credit: Brooke Foster

Rally weeks are always so busy and super fun. One day we had a field trip canoeing down the Suwannee River.

Another day they had field games like relay races and crab soccer.

We also had campfires, pot luck dinners and lots of other fun with old and new friends.

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FtF Rally Group Picture – Photo Credit: Brooke Foster

So that wraps up our winter in Florida and now we are making our way up the east coast. We are so excited to begin another year of adventures and making memories.

Categories: Florida | Tags: disney world, ditching suburbia, fernandina beach, Florida, ft. clinch state park, full time rv'ing, Fulltime Families rally, Jellystone Park, madison, rv travel with kids, silver springs, Suwannee River, three flags thousand trails | 5 Comments

Cross Country Road Trip

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Heather Gebbia

After an amazing summer in the Pacific Northwest it was time to start making our way back east for the winter. We had 6 weeks to get from Washington to Florida. This post will cover the stops we made along the way.

First we spent a quiet week in eastern Oregon on the Idaho border, recovering from a couple of very busy weeks in Washington. We stayed at Farewell Bend Recreation Area on the Snake River across from Idaho. It was beautiful and peaceful!

The 2nd week we spent celebrating Jake’s 13th birthday in Park City, Utah which I already wrote about. You can see it here if you missed it: Birthday Celebration in Park City, Utah.

Week #3 was spent in South Fork, Colorado where the fall foliage was gorgeous! Our campground was right on the Rio Grande River.

We spent week #4 in Amarillo, Texas for a couple of days and then the rest of the week in Oklahoma City.

In Amarillo we used the complimentary limo service to go have dinner at the Big Texan. This was so much fun and a shining example of true Texas hospitality!

We also stopped by Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo to leave our mark on the classic cars and to meet up with our good friends the Thomas family. Somehow we always end up on the opposite side of the country as them, and our paths crossed here in Texas as they were headed west and we were headed east. Someday I hope we’ll be in the same state again for more than a day or two!

My beautiful friend Erica who I miss so much!

After a busy 2 days in Texas we moved on to Oklahoma City. Our campsite here was interesting, right on the mini golf course!

While in Oklahoma City we met up with my sister’s good friend Rene who gave us a personalized tour of the Oklahoma City National Memorial where she lived and worked at the time of the tragic bombing. This was a very sobering site to see, and so interesting to hear Rene’s story of the events that happened that day in 1995.

We also visited the Science Museum in Oklahoma City which we could go to for free on our ASTC reciprocal membership. The boys enjoyed this science museum very much!

We moved on to Arkansas for week #5 to visit Hot Springs National Park. I have to admit we were not all that impressed with this national park after all the amazing and scenic parks we’ve been to out west. This was basically just a town with historical bathhouses. Maybe were missing something, but it seems like it’s probably more interesting for adults… not including Chris and me, we’re not adulting right now. 😉

It turns out we were parked next to another Fulltime Family at the Hot Springs KOA and we enjoyed getting to know them. I hope we meet up with them again in the near future.

The Mid America Science Museum is located near Hot Springs and it is also included on our ASTC membership so we went there too. Another super fun science museum that the boys really enjoyed!

After an overnight stop in Tupelo, Mississippi where Chris & I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary at a Japanese Hibachi grill along with our kids, we moved on for week #6 in Woodstock, Georgia where we were able to visit with my sister and her husband for the week. We stayed at Victoria Campground which had very nice and large sites and beautiful sunsets on Lake Allatoona. We had lots of fun with Cheryl & Chris playing games and just being our silly selves.

And then finally, after 6 weeks and over 3000 miles we were back “home” in Florida at our happy place, Disney World just in time for trick-or-treating at Ft. Wilderness.

We purchased new FL resident annual passes and got busy exploring our favorite amusement parks all over again. Lots of other Fulltime Families spend the winter in the Orlando area also, so it was fun to meet up with some of our friends at the Disney parks.

We even enjoyed a visit from my parents at Ft. Wilderness one weekend while they happened to be in the Orlando area.

As much as I love traveling out west, it is good to be home. We’ll spend the rest of this year hanging out with friends and family in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. I will probably be taking a break from blogging until we begin traveling again next year. Until then, I hope you all enjoy a blessed holiday season. Remember to make the most of your time with loved ones and be thankful. 🙂

Categories: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas | Tags: amarillo, Arkansas, big texan, cadillac ranch, Colorado, disney world, ditching suburbia, farewell bend recreation area, Florida, fort wilderness, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, Georgia, hot springs national park, mid america science museum, oklahoma city, Oklahoma city memorial, oklahoma city science museum, Oregon, rv travel with kids, south fork, Texas, victoria campground, woodstock | 2 Comments

Disney’s Fort Wilderness

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

While we were in Florida last winter we purchased Disney annual passes. We got some use out of them last December and January and then headed west. Now that we’re back on the east coast again, we headed back to Disney to get some more use out of those passes before they expired.

We stayed at Disney’s Ft. Wilderness campground for Halloween and went back again a few weeks later to enjoy the sites decorated for Christmas. Ft. Wilderness is still my favorite campground ever. Disney just knows how to do everything with excellence, and their campground is awesome. Of course you have to pay for that awesomeness. Ft. Wilderness is definitely the most expensive campground we ever splurge on. For us it’s worth it to stay right on Disney property and take advantage of the bus, boat and monorail transportation to all the parks as well as all the amazing amenities this campground has to offer.

Our first stay started the day before Halloween so that’s where our kids went trick-or-treating this year. Many people decorate their campsites for Halloween and give out candy. This was such a fun place to go trick-or-treating!

Sorcerer Mickey and the Storm Trooper

Some nicely decorated campsites.

Can you tell which storm trooper is Jake and which one is a decoration?

Ft. Wilderness has so many fun things to do that you could really stay there and not even go to any Disney parks if you don’t want to. They have a really nice bike trail that goes between the campground and the Wilderness Lodge Resort Hotel.

The marina beach area on Bay Lake is really nice. From there you can catch a boat to Magic Kingdom or to the Contemporary and Wilderness Lodge resorts.

At night you can watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the Bay Lake beach and also the electric light parade passes by every night at 9:45. Both are awesome to see!

The pool at Ft. Wilderness has a water slide, a kid’s splash park and a hot tub. Every day they have a pool party and games for the kids.

One weekend while we were there some really good friends from our Nassau County Homeschool Group (NCHE) came to stay with us. Our homeschool group had planned a Sea World field trip which was perfect timing so we could attend and see lots of friends from where we used to live.

We took a break from Disney (as if we ever need a break from Disney!) and went to visit my sister and brother-in-law in Atlanta and then my parents in Charlotte for Thanksgiving. Then it was right back to Ft. Wilderness for my favorite time of the year to be there. The way some campers decorate their campsites is something to see! We like to rent a golf cart whenever we’re there in December so that we can ride around the camping loops at night and check out all the decorations. Ft. Wilderness is huge! Having a golf cart to get around is nice, but certainly not necessary. They have internal bus transportation to take you all over the resort if you don’t have a golf cart. Disney charges way too much for golf cart rentals so we rent from someone off property for half the price Disney charges. Keep that in mind if you go, there are other options. 😉

This campsite was right in our loop and it’s amazing. They come every year I think because we’ve seen this set up many times and it’s one of the best.

Another one that seems to be there every year is a site that includes a lighted walkway and they allow you to walk through their site and check out all their decorations. It’s pretty amazing and super nice of those folks to let a bunch of strangers wander through their site.

And lastly, Cinderella’s castle at Magic Kingdom is stunningly beautiful at Christmastime. Although I really miss the Christmas lights they used to have at Hollywood Studios.

I love traveling all over the country, but I will always love coming back to Disney whenever our travels bring us back east.

If you need advice or tips on traveling around Florida, please check out my friend’s blog over at Crazy Family Adventure for the Ultimate Florida Road Trip. They put together a great post with ideas for visiting many different places in Florida. Their post also contains some helpful links for visiting Disney World.

We’ll be spending the remainder of this year with friends and family in FL and NC. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a blessed 2017!

Categories: Florida | Tags: christmas lights, disney world, ditching suburbia, Florida, fort wild, ft. wilderness, fulltime families, Fulltime RV'ing, halloween, orlando | 3 Comments

We’re Still in Florida

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Since my last post we have been very busy hanging out in Florida. There’s no sense leaving the state until it warms up in other states, right?

We spent a couple of weeks at Disney’s Ft. Wilderness, and my parents came to visit for part of our stay. Those of you that know us well, know that we are Disney fanatics and when we lived in FL that is where most of our vacations were spent. So anytime we’re back in FL you can be sure part of that time will be spent at our favorite place.

My mom sure does look young, doesn’t she? And she rides all the roller coasters too! I’m so thankful to have such cool parents. 🙂

Next we attended our 3rd Fulltime Families (FtF) rally at Lazydays in Tampa. If you remember that is where our adventures started last year. It was like a “nomadiversary” celebration being back at Lazydays.

At the rally last year, the boys started a new scouting program called FtF Explorers. At this year’s rally they finished up the required activities to advance to the next level. Here is a picture of the ceremony for the kids that graduated from Stargazer to Pioneer.

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One of the Explorer badges they earned was the Fire Safety badge by planning and executing a fire drill in our house. Here is a picture of them learning how to use one of the fire escape windows.

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The rally was super fun and super busy with several activities like a Valentine’s dance, an adult Hungry, Hungry Hippo game and a field trip to Legoland.

This is Chris playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos. This was hilarious! I played it too with Chris pushing me around on the floor, but I don’t have any pictures of that unfortunately. I must figure out how to get in more pictures!

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We enjoyed a beautiful day at Legoland with more than 300 other fulltime RV’ing families.

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I must admit that after several weeks of visits with family and friends in addition to Disney trips and a rally, we were quite exhausted. Chris & I are introverts. And that doesn’t mean we don’t like to be around people, we most definitely enjoy all of this social activity! But what it does mean is that we need some mix of downtime in between to recharge. Well, we didn’t have much of that since probably sometime in December so you can imagine that after leaving the rally we were pretty worn out. It was time for a few days at a peaceful and quiet campground. Eastbank Campground on Lake Seminole on the FL/GA border was just perfect for a chance to relax and recharge.

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Our campsite was huge and had a fantastic view of the lake and we enjoyed gorgeous sunsets and campfires every evening. We even enjoyed a lovely visit from my sister and brother-in-law. It was very nice to relax and unwind with them as they also have been very busy and needed some downtime. I loved watching my brother-in-law Chris enjoy the scenery with his ever-present camera.

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Next up? More Florida travels…

Categories: Florida | Tags: disney world, eastbank campground, Florida, ft. wilderness, FtF, fulltime families, Fulltime Families rally, lake seminole, lazydays, legoland, tampa | 2 Comments

Home for the Holidays

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Home. Where exactly do we call “home” when for the past year home has been where we parked it? Going home consisted of a few different places this year. First, we went home to Fernandina Beach, Florida where we lived before we started traveling. Going home to Florida was a strange feeling. Wandering around our old hometown and driving through our old neighborhood was really weird. Everything still looked pretty much the same, but felt so completely different. We visited with our old neighbors and it was strange to look across the street at our old house and realize I can’t just walk over there and go inside like I could have last year. It really was wonderful though to see some old friends. I really enjoyed catching up with one of my closest friends Kim over Mexican dip and wine. I really miss this girl!

We camped at Ft. Clinch State Park. Another blog post about that park later, but it was a real treat to stay there. I had tried several times to get a reservation there for weekend camping trips back when we lived just 10 minutes away. I used to ride my bike there and loved the campground, but it was always booked. It’s one of those state parks that you must book several months in advance to get in.

This is the beach just beside the campground loop we stayed in.

While we were there we visited Santa’s house because everyone knows that Santa Claus really lives in Fernandina Beach, Florida, not at the North Pole. We used to visit Santa several times every December when we lived nearby. I have pictures of the boys with him every year since they were babies. Santa’s house always looks so beautiful!

Going “home” for us also included a trip to Disney World. When we lived in Florida we usually had Disney annual passes and would go there several times a year. My favorite campground has always been Disney’s Ft. Wilderness, and even after all of the campgrounds we have stayed at this year, guess what? Ft. Wilderness is still my favorite! Visiting in December is my favorite time to visit because several of the campsites are decorated for Christmas and it’s really fun to ride the golf cart around at night and look at all the beautiful sites. This was one of the best. They had a lighted walkway to allow visitors to walk around their site.

The weather was beautiful that week and warm enough for the pool, and not the least bit crowded as you can see by the empty chairs in the background. I remember coming here when every single chair was taken and the pool was wall-to-wall people. It’s kind of nice to come when it’s not too busy. This was obviously in early December before the massive crowds that I heard were there this past week.

Another great thing about visiting Disney in December is the amazing display of Christmas lights at Hollywood Studios. I absolutely love seeing these lights that dance to Christmas music. Sadly, this is the last year they will have this display.

After Disney we visited my sister and brother-in-law at their new place in Georgia. While we were there we went to another really nice Christmas lights display. We love to take goofy pictures!

And finally, coming “home” also meant home to Charlotte, NC where Chris & I lived before moving to Florida over 15 years ago. We enjoyed a wonderful family Christmas at my parent’s house.

We had a chance to see Chris’s sister and family that we have not seen in a few years so that was very nice!

It was also a nice treat to visit with old high school and college friends during our visits to GA and NC. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of all the people we visited, but here are a couple.

And of course I can’t forget to mention that Fat Cat enjoyed the holidays as well. She even got wrapped up in paper like a present and she liked hiding under the Christmas tree. 🙂

It was so nice to spend time with so many friends and family over the holidays. To me, that is what coming home means. Being at home means being with family.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season and have a blessed 2016!

Categories: Florida, Fulltime RV'ing, North Carolina | Tags: amelia island, charlotte, disney world, family time, fernandina beach, fl, Florida, ft. clinch state park, ft. wilderness, hollywood studios christmas lights, nc, North Carolina | 1 Comment

Posts Tagged With: disney world

Family, Friends and More Disney

Disney’s Fort Wilderness and a Hurricane

Wintering in Florida

Cross Country Road Trip

Disney’s Fort Wilderness

We’re Still in Florida

Home for the Holidays

Why You Should NOT Buy a Heartland RV

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