As a kid, I was lucky to go on a family vacation every year! I know vacations can be expensive; they fly by and a week or two after you get back you almost feel like you never left, but…and this is a BIG but, the memories you make and the places you see are priceless! Of course, this is simply my opinion and I completely understand the joy of being home too 🙂

In my family, we’ve been taught to always take vacation. Find a way and go. It feels so necessary by the time it comes around each year; it’s like ‘yes, I need to get away, refocus and soak up the goodness in life’, escape the inevitable everyday stresses for a minute. The first vacation we took Hailey on together was to Myrtle Beach in 2012. Hailey loved it and I’ll never forget the video we took of her doing underwater flips in the pool; I think she did 7 in a row and when she came up for air she threw her hands into a pose and said ‘ta-da!’. Our second family vacation was last year to Disney World! It was such an amazing trip, especially because my parents and brother were able to join us! It was truly magical to watch the experience through Hailey’s eyes and see her excitement with rides, characters and of course Cinderella’s castle.

After that, she made it very well known the next place she wanted to visit was ‘Harry Potter World’. Not going to lie, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan so this upcoming trip is exciting for me as well, but I really loved the idea of surprising her with this one so I told her maybe next year! Like the sweet girl she is she replied “okay, that sounds good”. It took me quite a while to decide how to surprise her (and we even thought about telling her the morning we leave) until I came across Hogwarts acceptance letters one day. You can buy these online and I’m sure they look really nice; however, you will pay the price for them…approximately $30, plus shipping! I couldn’t justify that, but loved the idea of Hailey getting some Hogwarts mail so I decided to create my own. The bonus with this is I could customize it for our vacation. I typed up an acceptance letter, a supplies list and a final document with the big surprise on it if the hints weren’t clear enough! She figured it out before even opening the envelope! I thought it would be really cute to have a tag on the envelope saying ‘Sent by owl’, because as we ALL know that’s the only way to deliver mail in the world of magic 😉

So as she turned the envelope over and saw this she read out loud “Sent by Owl?”. After a few seconds of thinking, she exclaimed “I’m going to Harry Potter World!!”. We had to tell her she better open the envelope to make sure! Needless to say though, she is very excited and I’m happy we can countdown together now that everyone knows! And I love how it stays on her mind and she randomly brings it up in conversation…like “What should I bring? a cape and a wand. no, no an owl and a wand! I already have a cape. Do you think we can take an Owl? I can probably get one there! I’m so excited to get a wand! Are we going to see some goblins? I can’t wait to go!”

If any readers are planning a trip to Universal/The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and want to make it a surprise with a Hogwarts acceptance letter and supplies list, I referenced them here and also here! Have a little fun and customize them to make it unique! More to come on the Wizarding World of Harry Potter once we return! See you at the train station, platform 9 3/4. 😉

As always, thanks for reading!!