Rahn Autumn!

Our Rahn Autumn has been a busy one! Here are the highlights as we feel like we are racing through the weeks...hard to believe it is already the middle of October! Wow!!


First Days of School

Katie - 7th Grade

Carleigh - 9th Grade

Don - first day at Middle School

  
Rina's Birthday - our autumn wouldn't be complete without celebrating my mother's birthday. And a Rahn birthday party wouldn't be complete without party favors for everyone to cause trouble with!

This year it was little plastic Ninjas

and Kazoos!

Volleyball 
Carleigh made the Freshman team for Loudoun Valley High School - she is so excited and loving every minute of it!

Being introduced on Freshman Night

The Display for Freshman Night

Katie is having a great time with her 7th grade Volleyball team! She is getting better every day!

Dig Pink Game

The Annual Dig Pink volleyball game was held between Woodgrove and Loudoun Valley. Mom and Patty came to the game and were given special presents as Breast Cancer Survivors. It was a fun time for everyone!!

I got attacked by these two!

The Dogs and Leaf day

Junior and Don enjoying the peace and quiet

Junior having a very serious conversation with Katie and me!

We also had our annual leaf raking/photo shoot!

Homecoming Preparations

Dress shopping with the girls!

 Stay tuned for a full chronicle of all of the Homecoming Festivities!

 And then we start the countdown to Thanksgiving, Snow Days and Holiday Fun!!  We can't wait!!

2015 - Planning our next crazy adventure!

So...June 26, 2015 is not real close, but it doesn’t stop me from starting to plan our next big Rahn adventure. We knew we would be returning to Jackson Hole, the Tetons and Yellowstone National park, but wanted to add in some new adventures.  I refuse to go into debt for these big vacations, and the joy of planning is almost as exciting as the actual trip, so I don't mind starting early...and I don't mind sharing my tricks.  

It's taken me about 8 years to finally figure out how to work the system, and I've gotten a lot of advice and asked a lot of questions.  We originally had a Disney Visa card and were accumulating Disney dollars for our trips to WDW and our Disney Cruises.

Our First Disney Cruise - 2008

Then we realized there was a whole new world out then when we traveled to Hawaii and Jackson Hole for the first time... 

Jackson Hole in 2009

Hawaii in 2010

We were continually flying United Airlines out of Dulles to our destinations. We were spending lots of money for tickets to fly to the same places. We discussed and know that we will be flying and visiting new destinations for as long as we are able. So....we enrolled in the Frequent Mile program for United (all 4 of us) - and started accumulating miles for each flight we took. We flew to Hawaii (purchased the tickets) and were then able to fly to Vancouver the following year for half the price because of the accumulated miles we had in our mileage Plus accounts.  

Vancouver and Alaska in 2011

Wyoming and Montana - 2012

Walt Disney World - 2013

Barcelona, Spain - 2014

 United Airlines gives you options to buy tickets with your miles.

 You can get: 

• Saver Awards - 12,500 miles per ticket and $5.00, so 25,00 miles roundtrip and $10.00 per person 
• Standard Awards - 25,00 miles per ticket and $10.00 , so %0,00 roundtrip and $20.00 

When I made this discovery and figured out how the Mileage Plus awards worked, I was pretty excited. But, not all flights offer Awards tickets and it is a tedious task of monitoring the flights to see if Award tickets pop up. An Awards ticket might be available one day and disappear the following day, never to reappear. Also, accumulating miles into our accounts was a long process.  

I then figured out that you could double dip! When you rent a car, you can earn Airline miles if you register your Mileage Plus account with the rental car agency. So...we started accumulating extra miles for all of our rental cars.  Then...I also figured out that Hotel reservations can also earn airline miles if you register your Mileage Plus number at registration. Various restaurants also offer airline miles if you buy gift cards through the United site. 

Still...wanted more miles.... :) and faster....so I decided to bite the bullet and get the United Mileage Plus Explorer Visa Card! 

We had been getting credit card offers  from United for about the last 5 years. It was only last year that I actually opened one and read the fine print. Because we have mileage plus accounts, we received an offer to open a Visa account and get an automatic 50,000 miles (one or 2 free tickets worth), then add a user and get another 25,000 miles automatically (another ticket or 2), then 1 mile per $1 spent and 2 miles per $1 if purchasing United tickets. You can also get free luggage, and priority boarding.  

I got the Visa card right before buying our tickets to Barcelona, Spain - we earned lots of miles for flying and also got double miles for the cost of the tickets.  If you pay the bills, and don't accumulate debt on the Mileage Plus Visa Card, then it is a great deal for accumulating  miles to get the Awards tickets. 

So fast forward to this week. We have LOTS of miles and looking to next summer.....I have  been spending countless hours on the United site logged in with my Mileage Plus number that is registered to our Visa Card looking for awards tickets. 

I started talking to others and searching for United miles tips and tricks....I found out that if you search award travel with a Mileage Plus Visa number you will get extra award tickets offered to you.   I was then told to look at one-way tickets and you will have more options.  I was given advice to search neighboring airports, and they might have awards tickets that the more popular airports don't...so, I continued to search! 

I had enough miles for 4 one way tickets, and so with the fear that the tickets might disappear, I bought them. 4 one-way tickets to Jackson Hole next summer using the Standard Award tickets - $22 and 100,000 miles.  

Another trick that I learned was that when you buy tickets through United, you get the option to "buy" more miles at a hugely discounted price to add to your miles plus account.  So, I bought our Jackson Hole tickets for $22 and also bought an additional 3,000 miles for each of us at about a 75% discount than if I was trying to purchase miles outright.  

I then started looking at our 4 accounts to see what miles we had and how many more we needed to get 4 more awards tickets for tickets back to Dulles. We all had at least 14,000 miles still available. I started searching all available airports in Wyoming and Montana, Salt Lake City, near Glacier National Park and then....using Google Maps....I ventured into Canada and check out the Calgary area. 

I've probably spent about (total) 5-6 hours of off and on searching using GoogleMaps and the United site looking at various airports and checking for Awards tickets for the return dates that we are thinking.  

I found EXACTLY what I was looking for! 4 return Saver Award tickets (12,500 miles and $5) from Calgary, Canada to Dulles one one our possible dates. It was about 10:00 at night and Don was camping in the woods of Pennsylvania. I went to bed thinking about possible itinerary changes and how we could make it work and the exciting new places that we could visit. The next morning I woke up, logged into United to look at the tickets again - Don would be home that afternoon and I would buy the tickets after running everything by him. And...the Saver Award tickets were GONE - no longer available at all for any of the dates! Ugh!!! THey had been replaced by Standard Award tickets (25,000 each person) .  No other airports anywhere were offering Saver Award tickets because it was peak season, and planes would fill with full-paying customers.  

So..back to the drawing board of how to get about 30,000 more miles quickly, before these Standard Awards disappear.  

I probably spent about another 3-4 hours crunching numbers for 4 tickets. I was now set on flying out of Calgary and visiting Glacier National Park and Banff National Park in Canada back to Dulles.  

My trip-planning - beat United at it's own game Brain was in full gear: 

• what would be the original cost without any awards for 4 one-way tickets Calgary to Dulles?  
• I need to beat that price! 
• How much would it cost to buy additional miles from United to bring each of our 4 accounts up to 25,000 miles? 
• Could I transfer miles between us (for a fee) and get 3 Awards tickets and purchase one? 
• Could I do 2 Awards tickets and 2 purchased tickets? 
• Still checking neighboring airports for sudden Award tickets 

I've figured it out and am awaiting the final results to post - all the while having my fingers crossed that the Awards tickets from Calgary to Dulles don't disappear in the next few days! 

The best bet and cheapest alternative to full price tickets that I have found is - buying additional miles to bring all of our accounts up to 25,000 miles - then when all is done and validated/verified, I will buy 4 Standard award tickets (25,000 miles and $64 -  due to flying out of Canada) one-way from Calgary to Dulles. 

All done and over with, I will have saved close to $2300.00 if I am able to get these tickets in the next couple of days. Fingers crossed!! 

Stay tuned for the results and our planned itinerary that is in the works for our Wild West Adventure in June/July 2015.  

Princesses, Private Islands and Saying Goodbye! - Days 6 and Day 7

Day 6: Day at Sea

Today was a sea day as we traveled back to the Bahamas area from Jamaica. We had a great, lazy day and thoroughly enjoyed it after the business of the last 3 port days.

We started with a nice breakfast and then Katie, mom and I decided to attack the "Princess Gathering" in the Atrium. All 6 princess (and some surprise guests) would be meeting and greeting. There were lines and lots of little girls dressed up, but overall it was a fun experience. Not chaotic at all, and on a sea day with nothing else to do, there was no stress as we waited to get pics with all of them.

Ariel

Belle

Jasmine

Prince Ali (Aladdin) was out and about mingling with the people as they waited in line.

Cinderella

Rapunzel (we'd never met her before)

Princess Tiana (another new one for us)

Carleigh wasn't interested in the princesses, and spent the morning in The Vibe.

After princesses, we met Don up on Deck 11 to watch part of another World Cup U.S. game - we at lunch and watched on the Funnel Vision.

Carleigh did meet us after lunch to watch Maleficent in the theater. It was a great movie. I was pleasantly surprised, and again...happy to see it at sea with no additional charges.

After the movie, Don and Katie did another Midship Detective Agency mystery and I headed back to start thinking about packing and sorting. Tomorrow (our last day) would be a full day at Castaway Cay - Disney's private Bahama island, so I wanted to get a head start today so that I could enjoy tomorrow more.

Dinner was semi-formal night, so we dressed up for our last set of pics and enjoyed the Atrium again.

 These last pics turned out to be some of my favorites. I'm glad we decided to do another round of family pictures.

We also found a pretty sunset as we were waiting for dinner.

Dinner was great, I had started packing, the girls were headed back to the clubs till the wee hours, and we were looking forward to our last adventure...Castaway Cay!

Day 7: Castaway Cay

We woke up on our last full day to a beautiful rainbow as we were approaching Castaway Cay. This is Disney's private island in the Bahamas - fully run by Disney. The servers get off the ship and run the 2 restaurants on the island for the day - photographers roam the beach and take pics - you can sit in your beach chair and they will bring drinks to you.....

I don't have a lot of pics from that day because we did a lot of walking around and then the rain looked like it was coming in, so our day was cut short. Mom stayed on the ship today, she'd already seen Castaway, and enjoyed the ship's adult only pool area - Satelite Falls.

We started with Don, Carleigh and Katie doing a  big snorkeling trip in the lagoon..

Carleigh then found the teen section of the beach and played volleyball for a while and hung out there -

Don was playing also (in the yellow shirt on the right)

We ate lunch, Don did a bit more snorkeling and found this guy:

Then the rain clouds started moving in, and we collected everyone and headed back to the ship.

Once back on the ship, we decided to watch the "Till We Meet Again" show in the Atrium before getting ready for dinner. This is the show on the last evening where all the characters come down and visit/sing songs and say goodbye to everyone...

 After the characters come down the stairs, they then take about 15 minutes and will pose for "one last picture" before they leave. :)

I like this one - it looks like a real conversation is happening. :)

Our last dinner was in Animator's Palate again and it was Animation Night. Each person got a placemat  and you had to draw a figure. You then gave it to your server and they took it to the back room and each picture became animated and part of the big show on the screens in the restaurant towards the end of the meal....VERY COOL!!

Katie's on far left, and then my curly head next to Katie's

Mom's on the far left, then Carleigh's Ninja drawings

we sign our name and at the end they roll the credits - you'll see Don, Laura, Kathie, Carleigh on this screen

Here's a clip of the animation show. The beginning is all the characters dancing and moving by themselves and in small groups. Then they start interacting with Disney charcters. In the video above, you'll see mom's character dancing with Mickey Mouse and mine is marching out with Jiminy Cricket.  Just another way that Disney makes everything magical and caters to all ages. :)

We then had our final photo shoot with Ninja and Mahadi, our servers. They were fantastic and treated us so well all week!!

After dinner, the girls made their way to the last night in the clubs. We finished packing and were up the next morning for our final breakfast and then off the ship and the bus ride back to the airport.

Once at the airport, we had about 4 hours before our flight - it was nap time...

 I'll end with a video Katie made of all of our pics put to music.....(about 4 minutes long)

Back home to reality and to start planning our next Disney Adventure - summer of 2016...Anyone?

 

Stay tuned for our annual family beach trip to Emerald Isle  - year #11!