The words we say and attitudes we hold influence our children so much!

Each week my son goes to a ninja class where he learns tumbling and parkour (think “American Ninja Warrior” for little ones). He loves it! Last week, his class with filled with all boys who were age 5 to 7. They jumped and tumbled and ran. During one of their water breaks, I heard another little boy talking with his family. He said he was tired.

The kids had just finished jumping and running over and over, so it was tiring. He wasn’t whining. The grandpa leaned over to the child, pointed to the all-female competitive cheerleading team practicing on the next mat over and asked his grandson if he wanted to go to the girls. When he said no, then the grandpa advised him to stop complaining or he’d have to.

Undermining the value of women

I bristled. It bothered me. The message he just sent his grandson is that those girls aren’t as valuable. He told his grandson that going to a group of girls is a punishment. He told his granddaughter, who was sitting right beside him, that boys only do something girls do as punishment. Boys are better. Even crazier to me is those girls were older than his grandson and a heck of a lot better at their skills of tumbling. The grandpa was undermining the value of women.

OK. So it might sound like I’m over-reacting. I don’t want to rant and rave. But, as the mother of a boy, I want to be conscious of what I’m teaching him through my attitudes and words. As the mother of a girl, I want to be conscious of what I’m teaching her through my attitudes and words.

I don’t appreciate the idea that for a boy to go into a girls’ class is punishment. And I wouldn’t appreciate it in reverse either. I am aware there are differences between boys and girls and men and women. We tend to have different strengths and such, but that doesn’t make either gender less than the other. I never want my daughter to feel she is less than a boy just because she’s a girl. I never want my son to feel superior to a girl just because he’s a boy.

What was very interesting to me is that very evening on the way home from his ninja class, my son and I had a discussion right along these lines. He wanted to know if Adam and Eve had only sons, because he’s didn’t hear about their daughters.

I explained to him that through the years, as men wrote down history, including the Bible, they didn’t take women and children into account because they didn’t think they were important. We talked about how Jesus fed the 5,000, but that 5,000 was only the number of men. He actually fed way more than 5,000. My son was incredulous that they didn’t care about women and children. How could they not, he wondered.

God’s plan for the value of women

My best answer was unfortunately that’s just how it was. I did tell him God didn’t plan it that way from the beginning. Yes, He made Adam first, but that doesn’t mean that Eve wasn’t just as important. I reminded my son that God loves all of us the same, and seeing any one of His children being treated poorly based on gender or skin color must make Him sad.

I didn’t bring up this topic. But, I did find it quite timely that my son did. He didn’t hear the grandfather’s words. I didn’t say a word about it to him. In fact, I didn’t even share it with anyone aside from a friend I met for breakfast the next morning. However, the two conversations go side-by-side.

The power of our attitudes

The grandfather didn’t tell his grandson that he was superior and girls don’t matter or aren’t as important in those exact words. Not many people would say that, especially these days.

But his attitude showed a different picture. His attitude showed that he clearly thinks women are less-than, weaker, whinier and wimpier than boys. And THAT message offends me for myself, my daughter and my son. I don’t want to raise a boy to be a man with that attitude. His father doesn’t have that attitude. His Heavenly Father certainly doesn’t have that attitude.

The words we say hold so very much power. We live in a world of political correctness where people are often chastised for the words they use, sometimes to the point of what seems ridiculous. I understand that maybe we get tired of posts just like this one. Tirades exhaust us, and we roll our eyes at what seems an over-reaction.

But until these kinds of attitudes stop and aren’t accepted, they must continue. I will stop myself from getting off on a tangent about how women are treated and perceived inside the church. In fact, I’d daresay many churches are the greatest offenders of gender equality. I want to focus instead on thinking about the hidden messages in the words we say to our children. They are soaking every last one of them up.

That little boy didn’t go home last week thinking he was better than girls directly. He did go home having absorbed some of his grandpa’s attitude about the value of women. If he is given that attitude enough times, it will fully soak in and shape his views. That is what we must do our best to change and do better than generations before us. We’ve made progress, but so much more progress needs to be made. The message we are giving our sons (and daughters!) shouldn’t be one of superiority over any one for any reason.

Resurrection eggs perfect for toddlers through elementary aged kids that you can easily make yourself

A few years ago, I was searching for ideas to help my kids understand the meaning of Easter. They were 2 and 5 at the time. I knew the 2-year-old wouldn’t grasp too much, but the 5-year-old definitely would. So I began my search for something simple, yet effective, and discovered resurrection eggs.

Resurrection eggs were a new concept to me. They weren’t something I grew up with or had ever heard of. I did some research and learned  you can buy or make them. A lot of them were for 12 days, which seemed overwhelming to me.

Then I found a plan that used six eggs. I did some tweaking, and we gave it a try four years ago. The resurrection eggs were a hit and worked really well.

My kids are older now at 6 and 9, and they look forward to our resurrection eggs each year. I love that the eggs help us stay focused on the real reason we celebrate Easter. It is very similar to what we do with our Christmas countdown using Bible verses to tell the Christmas story. Each evening we open an egg and have the kids tell us what has been happening in the Easter story so far.

How to make the eggs

I am not one bit a crafty person, so I can assure you that these are really simple to pull off. All you need to do is buy six plastic Easter eggs. The rest of the stuff you most likely will have at home. I went with the bigger eggs rather than the small ones that we usually do for an Easter egg hunt. That’s my best suggestion, but the small ones could work, too.

After you have your eggs, label them with a permanent marker number one through six. Next print the paper of verses and cut them into slips and put them into their corresponding egg. Each slip will tell you what is needed each day. (Click the image below to open and/or download a PDF of the verses.)

Day one

Luke 22:14-15 needs bread crumbs (I put these in the day of instead of ahead of time and just pinch off pieces of sandwich bread or from a bun or whatever I have.)

Day two

John 19:17-18 needs a cross (You can also use any cross you have that will fit in the egg, including a printed picture of a cross or simply a cross shape you’ve drawn on a piece of paper. Two years ago, my dad made us wooden crosses that we can use every year.)

Day three

John 19:40 needs a strip of cloth (If you have a scrap of cloth, great! If not, I use a piece of a paper towel. It works.)

Day four

Matthew 27:59-60 needs a rock (I went outside and got one from my yard.)

Day five

Luke 24:1-3 needs nothing

Day six

Matthew 28:5-6 needs candy (You could totally use gummies or whatever your kids enjoy.)

And that’s pretty much it. You open an egg a day starting the Tuesday before Easter, and it will take you through Easter Sunday.

Looking for an even easier version?

Check out my paid version on Etsy that comes with images to cut out and put in your eggs as well. All you need are eggs!

Looking for more Easter ideas?

This post first ran on my Written Creations’ blog back in March of 2012. That was almost a year before my son was born and when my daughter was 2. I read it again last week and got choked up. While I’ve learned so very many more lessons about motherhood in the seven years since then, they all have defied my expectations. Here are my words from seven years ago with minimal editing:

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some major cleaning in my house. It was a Saturday morning and my husband offered to help me deep clean. So we shipped the kiddo off to her grandparents’ house a few minutes away and got down to work. Thanks to my mother, I can’t clean without music cranked. Well, I can and have, but I much prefer some tunes on to rock away to. I found a purple CD. My husband had made it for me right after we were married when I was halfway through college. I had forgotten completely about it. But, it had some of my favorite songs of the time on it. I stuck it in the kitchen radio and had a great time while I was cleaning. Oh the memories that flooded back!

As I was mopping the floor, I was reflecting to myself, “Man, if that collegiate newlywed Stacey only knew how things would turn out, she’d be surprised.” Then I almost literally stopped in my tracks. When I was in college and you asked me what I wanted to do, I’d have told you that I wanted to work at a magazine and then eventually be a freelancer while I raised a family. I took a bit of a roundabout path, but it hit me I am doing exactly that. I am a freelancer. And it is great while I am raising my kiddo.

I didn’t get here how I expected I would. I thought I’d work for a magazine first. I was wrong. After being an assistant historian for a while at a museum, I quit and began freelancing full-time. It wasn’t my plan. But, it was what worked best, especially because I was barely able to leave my house for a while. My health had taken a downturn for sure. However, it jump-started my freelance career and slowly but surely I began building up a base of editors and clients. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t what I had planned, but somehow it was perfect.

My work is far from the only thing that’s different than I expected. There have been a whole slew of hard times that I didn’t see coming (who ever does?). There have been challenges. But, there has been lots of goodness. And more than any thing else in my life, motherhood has been the most unexpected.

I expected to be a mother. I very much wanted to be a mother and knew that somehow, someday I would be. My plan maybe got pushed back a few years thanks to my health and some other circumstances, but when the time was right, it was right. My husband and I agreed. The whole thing started out defying my expectations. I figured it would take a while to get pregnant. By the second month, I had a positive test.

I fully expected that my bladder wouldn’t go into remission and I’d be miserable throughout my pregnancy with IC. You know what? I did go into remission. I ate things I could never have otherwise. I even drank some — gasp — orange juice! To give you an idea of how major that is, orange juice has caused me bladder issues my entire life. I still seldom give it to my child because I feel like I’m giving her poison when I do. So, yeah, it was remission.

Then I went through labor and delivery. I had expectations of how it would go. Ha, ha, ha! Silly Stacey. It wasn’t what I expected. But, man oh man, that didn’t compare to motherhood. Holy cow! I expected it to be hard. But it was way harder than I could ever have imagined.

These feelings have been popping up recently as I’m working on an article about exclusively pumping. You see, I also had expectations that I’d breastfeed my baby. I had no grand desire to do so. I was fine with, “I’ll give it a try and see what happens.” I wanted her to have some breast milk. I liked the benefits. I liked most the one bit of information I’d found that said breast milk reduces chances for UTIs. Having suffered with my bladder like I have, that seemed like a golden ticket to me. My goal was to go for six months of nursing if I could. And if I needed to go back on my bladder medicine sooner, then I’d stop.

That first week was so freaking hard. My daughter couldn’t figure out where to put her tongue to suck effectively whether she was taking a bottle or nursing. She wasn’t getting any food and my milk was drying up faster than the Sahara Desert. I started a regime of exclusively pumping thanks to advice from my pediatrician, a lactation consultant and my sister-in-law who was three months into exclusively pumping for TRIPLETS!! (Yeah, if she could do that, who was I to complain?) I also started down a path with one complication after the next for myself. By the time my kiddo figured out what to do with her tongue it was a month and a half later. And she wasn’t going back.

I tell you all this to tell you it certainly wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t what I planned. But, it worked. By Christmas (about three months later), I had pumped every two hours for long enough that I was able to completely feed her milk without formula. I maintained that for a year! A whole entire year! It was twice as long as I had set out to do. Maybe that’s why I needed to pump. Maybe that was God’s plan. 

It wasn’t what I expected. It was hard. It was exhausting. I had times I wanted to throw that pump out the window. I HATED getting up when everyone else was asleep (including my baby) and hooking up to that machine. I hated washing the bottles. I hated washing the pump parts. I hated having to put my baby down instead of taking extra snuggle time because I had to pump.

But, at the same time I loved it.  I loved seeing those little thighs get chubby. I loved seeing her smile (once she started smiling) when she got her bottle. I loved looking deep into her eyes as I fed her. The kid never once held her bottle on her own. She was eventually fully capable, but she was just never interested. And that was OK with me. It was our time. We weren’t bonding like I had thought we might with her breastfeeding, but we were bonding nonetheless. And she was growing. And she was healthy. And she was strong. And she was beautiful. And she was perfect. And she was worth it.

I look at her now — at my vivacious 2-year-old — and I’d do it again. It was unexpected. This motherhood journey is quite unexpected. Heck, even just looking at her and seeing what I see is unexpected. Having brown hair and brown eyes and being married to a man with black hair and hazel eyes, I never dreamed I’d look at redhead with blue eyes and call her mine. Motherhood is full of surprises and the unexpected. Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. And some of it just is.

I think the biggest challenge is to get over what we expected. To let go of what we had planned and just enjoy and appreciate what we have. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I had thought I was 100 percent reconciled to the fact that I ended up having to exclusively pump. I thought I had dealt with those emotions of disappointment, sadness and frustration. They’ve been bubbling up as I’m working on this article. And that’s OK. It’s a grief process sometimes to let go of what we expected from life and move on. But, that’s what we need to do. We need to move on. While we don’t want to get stuck in the past, neither should we get stuck in what we expected. I don’t think any adult on this planet would ever tell you his life turned out as he had planned. And that’s OK. If my life went exactly how I’d planned, I’d have missed out on some good things along the way. I’d have missed some lessons. And I sure as heck wouldn’t appreciate the good times nearly as much as I do for having been through the hard ones.

The Internet is filled with loads of posts about how to get the most out of your Disney World and Universal Florida vacations. I know because I read many of them when my husband and I decided to take our kids on their first flying trip to Florida for spring break last week! I’m not going to give you a comprehensive, everything-you-need-to-know list of tips, but I do have some lessons I learned last week that I think could help you as plan!

Disney World

I am going to start here for two reasons. First, I see the most posts about Disney World. And second, it’s the first place we started! I have read lots of posts from folks who seem to have drunk some sort of Disney Kool-Aid and think it’s incredibly magical. Of course, they could also be an affiliate of Disney. Neither of those things apply to me! I enjoyed our time at Disney and don’t regret going, but Magic Kingdom was my least favorite park of all the parks we visited.

While I had been to Disney World as a child, my last trip there was 30 years ago when I was 9. My husband and kids, who are 6 and 9, had never been there. Our original plan was to get a 5-day pass for Disney and spend the whole week at Disney parks since they have so many of them: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach.

Know what is at Disney — and what isn’t.
We prepared ourselves with ideas of what we wanted to do. I checked websites and talked to friends who had been there. We started reading the first “Harry Potter” book to our kids to prepare. And that’s where the problem started. Harry Potter isn’t at any of the Disney parks. Then we realized that though Disney owns Marvel Studios, it doesn’t have the rights to Marvel for rides and such.

Both Harry Potter and Marvel are part of Universal Studios Florida, which is not only separate from Disney World but is a direct competitor. As we looked at Universal, we realized our kids know a whole lot more Universal characters than Disney ones. With Harry Potter, Marvel Superheroes, Jurassic Park, Transformers, Dr. Seuss, Minions and more, we knew that Universal Studios needed to be on our to-do list. So our plans shifted. I was literally within a day of buying our 5-day Disney tickets when I realized this. I’m glad I did before we spent money on non-refundable tickets and weren’t able to do half of what we were looking forward to.

Think about food.
There were two things I’d read most about food at the Disney parks. One was that if you wanted a sit-down restaurant or character dinner, you had to book months in advance (and MAYBE sign away rights to your oldest child). I didn’t worry about that so much because a sit-down dinner wasn’t something we were interested in. A character dinner sounded fun (especially at the Be Our Guest restaurant since I’m a HUGE fan of “Beauty and the Beast”), but I realized we were going to want to spend more time in the park since we only allotted two days for Disney.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the lack of other food. I assumed that like most theme parks I’d been to that Disney would have various stations of quick foods to grab in between rides. I also assumed that since it is a place that caters to kids that it would have plenty of kid friendly foods. I was wrong. We were disappointed in Magic Kingdom. We checked menus through the Disney App and found that there weren’t many grab-and-go options available anywhere unless we wanted just a Mickey ice-cream for lunch. We ended up tracking down an OK and over-priced lunch. Over-priced I expected, though. I mean, it’s a theme park! We struggled for dinner even more and ended up with sweets at the highly over-priced Gaston’s Tavern. (I kinda hated to support Gaston…)

Does good food for families exist at Magic Kingdom? I’m sure it does based on what I’ve read online, but I didn’t find it readily available where we were at any time for lunch or dinner. So definitely do research and decide where you’d like to eat then plan your day around that. Seriously. Magic Kingdom is large and so busy that you can’t walk across it to get to dinner and then return to where you were. You can also bring along your own food. While we talked about doing so, we decided not to because we didn’t want to bring a backpack, but I totally wished we had!

I will say we had much better luck at Epcot, which was the other Disney park we visited, but I also had to scope it out ahead of time and plan our day around it. I was up at 6 a.m. that day reading menus on the Disney app.

Decide on bringing a bag.
There are lots of people with backpacks at Disney parks. I found lists ahead of time of all the things you can or should bring with you to Disney. We were on the fence about it and then decided to forego bringing a bag. Here’s what I will say, if we still had a kid in a stroller, I’d totally take a backpack of stuff! But, we don’t. I didn’t want to take my purse because thanks to my fibro, no matter how light it is, it hurts my shoulder by the end of the day.

So, we figured out our essentials and were able to fit them in our pockets. My husband in charge of cash since he carries cash in his pocket anyway. He also carried a small tube of sunscreen that we used for touch-ups throughout the days as needed. My pockets contained my cell phone, ponytail holder, small pill container with meds I needed and lipstick.

My parents were with us, and my mom brought a small purse. She had hand cleaner for all of us, so I didn’t worry about that, but I also had individually wrapped handi-wipes that fit in my pocket, too. BUT, her purse did teach us one thing about security. There are different lines based on whether you have a bag or not. If you do have a party member with a bag, once the bag is checked, you all get through without having to go through the metal detectors. It actually made security go a bit quicker for us since there were six of us.

Go to Epcot.
We had two days. I figured we would spend them both at Magic Kingdom or maybe the second one at Animal Kingdom. But my 9-year-old daughter surprised both my husband and me with how much she wanted to go to the “Frozen” section at Epcot. She’d be sad if she didn’t get to go, in fact. We looked at Epcot and its rides. We debated back and forth just a bit, but of course we gave in. Because she’s 9 and chances are the next time we take her to Disney she won’t be into princesses. Then a friend told me that Epcot was totally worth it and wasn’t what I remembered as boring from my own childhood.

I am so glad we went. It was my favorite of the two Disney parks we visited! Epcot wasn’t as packed. It offered more places to sit and had stellar rides. I loved almost every single one of them — seriously! The only ride I didn’t enjoy was Mission Mars, because despite my instincts telling me to go for the less intense mission, I went with the harder one and didn’t feel great for a short time afterward. And I highly recommend the Soarin’ ride. It was phenomenal for everyone from my 6-year-old to my parents!

“Frozen” did have a super long wait for the ride, but we had a Fast Pass for it, which was nice other than missing out on some of the scenery in the wait line. My biggest regret for Epcot is that we didn’t have time to go all the way through the various countries.

Beware that not all character experiences are created equal.
While I knew a character dinner wasn’t going to fit into our time for the Disney parks (and I hadn’t started planning six months ahead), I did want to have some character interaction.

I got us a Fast Pass at Magic Kingdom for StoryTime with Belle, because it seemed to be filling up and I love Belle. LOVE Belle! But, it was disappointing to me. My kids enjoyed it, because it was 100 percent focused on kids. But we got very little time with Belle and no photo opps for the adults, only for the kids.

The kids were separated from us a bit for this as well, which I didn’t like because part of the fun of Disney is seeing their faces light up. The other thing to know is that the story time offers various roles to re-enact the stories, but not all kids get chosen for much. Long story short, it wasn’t so worth it and I regret using a Fast Pass for it.

However, it was our best way to see a character at Magic Kingdom. We didn’t see any characters walking around in the actual parks, which I thought they might do. Of course, they could totally do that and we just missed them. But of the two days at Disney parks we didn’t see that happen.

We did one other character experience, though, and that was at Epcot. It was great! We had photo opportunities with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy. We were able to take photos of just the two kids, of the four of us and with my parents as well. My parents also did photos just the two of them. And we got one priceless one of my dad kissing Minnie Mouse on the cheek! We had a 20-minute wait for that, and it was definitely worth it. I also appreciated that the photographers were more than willing to take a photo for you with your phone so you didn’t have to rely just on paying for the Disney photos.

Consider Magic Bands.
Since we didn’t stay on a Disney property Magic Bands weren’t included for us. We debated about whether they were worth it for $15 each for the plain ones. In the end, we decided to get them and I did like them. It made getting into the parks a breeze as well as the Fast Passes. You could totally do it with tickets, but the bands really did work well. I was almost disappointed that we didn’t have something similar for Universal. And my kids thought getting to wear them was super cool!

The Magic Bands also let us have most photos sent automatically to our account so we could decide whether to buy them. We didn’t do the $200 photo pass for Disney. But, you can opt to spend $80 for a day’s worth of photos or order products with the photos on them to get whether you get any of the access.

Along with photos there were a couple of experiences that worked in the Magic Bands. The end of It’s a Small World featured our names thanks to them and so did a ride at Epcot. Pretty cool!

Universal Studios Florida

Plan ahead where you can.
There are a couple of big differences between Universal and Disney. First is that the two main parks we went to (we didn’t go to Volcano Bay, which is a water park) are close to each other. I didn’t pay for a Park Hopper at Disney, but I did for Universal and don’t regret it. If you want to ride on the Hogwarts Express, you have to have a multi-park in the same day ticket, because it takes you from one park to the other. That was our main reason for getting those tickets, but it worked well because the Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure are so close together. Islands of Adventure includes the Marvel superheroes. Both parks include Harry Potter experiences.

But unlike Disney, Universal doesn’t automatically offer a Fast Pass system. Its Express Pass costs around $100 per day per ticket. If you stay on their properties, it’s included free, but we didn’t stay on their properties. Express Pass works on any ride at any time, though, so its flexibility would be nice.

If you don’t have Express Pass (and we didn’t because the cost was pretty substantial), you need to know what rides have long waits and head there early. The two days we were at Universal seemed pretty slow in the mornings. Not so slow that there was no wait, but definitely it worked best to be there early and head to popular attractions first like Escape from Gringotts and even Olivanders.

Find characters everywhere.
Another notable difference at Universal is that we ran into characters all the time. The first day we started with Islands of Adventures and got to meet Spider-man. Listen, I love Spider-man as much as I love Belle and I was pleased that Spidey was so nice and chatted with my son and then was happy to do a photo with me. He even laughed when my son told him that I love him more than my son does. I had a total fan girl moment.

But Spider-man wasn’t just it. In the superhero area, every half hour or so, the superheroes take to the streets and you can spy Spider-man, Wolverine, Storm and Cyclops (or at least that’s who was there the two days we were). The lines to have your photo taken with them are pretty short as well.

And it isn’t only superheroes who are readily available. We saw characters from Madagascar, Transformers, Harry Potter and more I know I’m forgetting.

The photo package is worth it.
Because there were so many character photo opportunities, we decided to get the photo package for Universal. For $100, you get a photo pass that lasts for three days, which is half the price of Disney’s. You get a lanyard to wear and every photographer that spies it asks to take your photo. We got some good photos this way and I’m glad we did it!

I will add that the downside to the Universal photo package is that since Universal doesn’t do something like a Magic Band then you have to have your photo card on your lanyard scanned in order to have the photos in your account. That means after rides with photos you have to stop by the photo kiosk at the end and such. But it really wasn’t cumbersome or inconvenient.

The other downside is that the photos require a separate app from the park’s app. But, again, that didn’t bother me.

Skip the character dinner.
While Disney has a multitude of character dinners, Universal only offers a superhero one. We were super excited about it and forked over $50 a person to do so. We arrived to find the dinner had been canceled and we hadn’t been notified. Talk about disappointing! We got a refund. They offered for us to come the next night, but we weren’t going to be at the park that day.

However, I’d skip the character dinner anyway because the characters are so readily available in the park for photo opps. Having more time with them at the dinner would be nice, but if it doesn’t work out or isn’t in the budget, at least you will get a chance to see them.

Enjoy a wider variety of food.
Universal did better with food. There were lots of different and quick options that were more like what I expected from a theme park. We didn’t have trouble finding places to eat in the parks. Even better, we also didn’t have trouble finding somewhere to sit to eat either.

Just outside the parks is Universal’s CityWalk, which is like an outdoor mall. There are stores and restaurants. Those restaurants can be pretty full in the evenings, but not too bad as we found when we had to go to plan B after our character dinner was canceled.

General tips

Downsize your stuff, including your wallet.
We tried to not carry more with us than necessary. For me that meant cleaning out even my wallet before we left home. My library cards and store credit cards weren’t going to be needed on our trip. I took along my debit card, credit card, driver’s license and health insurance cards. (And I’m glad I had the health insurance cards since my daughter came down with strep throat halfway through our trip and needed to make a trip to Walgreens’ Minute Clinic!)

Get prepaid credit cards for the kids.
Our kids each had spending money for our trip. They had been given some from us and from other relatives and they also had some money saved from Christmas gifts that they used. To make life easier and avoid having to keep track of cash envelopes for both of them, we bought prepaid credit cards for each of them. I wrote their name in a Sharpie on the front of their cards and affixed a Minnie Mouse sticker for my daughter and Mickey Mouse sticker for my son so they’d be even easier to tell apart. We kept track of their balance on my husband’s phone. Calling to check the card balance was easy to double-check our math and make sure we hadn’t missed a receipt. It worked incredibly well.

We considered getting a Disney card, but the kids ended up with a decent amount of spending money and having the prepaid Visa let them use it anywhere we were.

Check toy prices.
While my kids were thrilled to have their own spending money for our trip, their idea of souvenirs was toys more often than not. My husband and I were OK with that and helped them decide how to best use their money. We expected a price markup in the parks and surrounding areas, but some things were crazy. For example, my son found a Jurassic World toy he wanted. It was twice as much inside Universal’s park as it was on Amazon. So we opted to order it from Amazon. And it gave him something to look forward to coming home.

Stop by those cheap souvenir stores.
On our very last day we stopped by a souvenir store with a giant wizard statue on it. I wish we would have gone sooner in the week. While it advertised T-shirts for ridiculously low prices, it also had some decent finds. We got some cool souvenirs there that were nice. I found a tote bag I loved for only $8 and picked up a sweatshirt for $20, which was less than half anything I’d seen at either park and I liked them both better than anything I’d seen.