Travel has had a huge impact on our large family. Finding something we all enjoy doing together has helped create our family identity. At the beginning of our journey, we were fearful of the unknown challenges, but I am here to say travel is possible with a large family and my own personal experience helps me come alongside my guests to create a vacation they will remember for a lifetime.
My MVP story began during a time in my life when I was feeling overwhelmed. We were foster parents trying to navigate life with 6 young children. I had vacationed at Walt Disney World several times and was very knowledgeable about its ins and outs, but I needed someone to relieve some of the pressure and help me with the planning. There was a lot of uncertainty and fear not knowing how to manage travel with a large family. How would our children react to new situations and a new environment? Would they be afraid of the characters? Would our foster children even be allowed to travel with us? What if we had to cancel?
As I was relaying my worries to a friend, she suggested I plan our vacation with a Magical Vacation Planner. It was an amazing experience to have someone help me with the research and to think through every aspect of our vacation. The relief that I felt having her take care of the details gave me the assurance needed to move forward. That MVP agent was instrumental in our first vacation together as a family of 8. Even though there were stressful moments (as there always are when traveling with children), that trip gave us the confidence and courage to start vacationing as a large family. It reassured us that we were doing the right thing for our family while building amazing core memories they will always remember. Everything won’t always go perfectly, but it is always worth it to make the sacrifice to create those memories together.
With the busyness of life and working around 8 schedules, traveling together as a family has become incredibly important to us. The time spent away from school, sports, and activities where we can focus on being together as a family laughing, having fun, and sometimes even crying together is invaluable. As we started growing our family through adoption, we wanted to create a strong sense of family identity. Travel has become part of who we are as a family and has given us the opportunity to connect, grow, and define the Stillings as a family unit. We are all different with unique personalities, but travel is something that creates that common bond as we ALL enjoy it together.
Micki Stillings