Disney on my mind…

I took that photo of Maura late last night. Donald always sits at the foot of her bed, but she felt the need to hug him because, like me, she had Disney on her mind.

Yesterday I found out that we’ll be going to the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration at Walt Disney World next year. We went to the last conference, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been granted a spot at the next one.

Luck. That’s what I’m attributing it to.

While last year I received a personal invitation, this time around, registration was open to everyone. Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of social media savvy moms applied this past Thursday for a very limited amount of spots at the next conference coming up in March. It wasn’t clear whether registration meant that we were ‘in’ since we had to include our blog and Twitter stats. “All registrants will be verified prior to registration confirmation…” Verified for what exactly? While I was optimistic, my expectations weren’t high. I thought that maybe they’d pick a whole new crop of moms for this next conference and since I went to the last one, I’d be out of the running.

This wasn’t the case. I received my confirmation email yesterday. “Dear Mariana: Let the social media memories begin!” I didn’t read much further before jumping on to Twitter to see who else got in… and was sad to see that many, many of my friends did not. I got lucky.

It took forever for the registration page to load for me, so I know I wasn’t one of the first ones. I don’t have jaw-dropping traffic on my blog, and many of the “big” bloggers weren’t accepted, so stats aren’t it either. I just got lucky.

That’s something I was missing at the last conference. If you were following my saga, you might remember that I almost didn’t get there. Snowmaggedon, Snowpocalypse, Snowverkill – whatever the weathermen called it – hit the DC area that week, bringing the entire city to a standstill. We had multiple flights cancelled, trains were shutdown… but I wasn’t giving up. I had promised my daughters a trip to Disney World and I was going to get them there. The 30+ inches of snow in my driveway didn’t scare me. A nightmarish 30-hour bus ride followed… and well, I don’t even want to look back on it at this point. Our brains seem to be wired to rid themselves of painful memories, don’t you think? We got there, and it was worth all the trouble it took.

Yesterday, after finding out the good news, I didn’t run and tell my kids. They still don’t know. I did ask them both if they’d like to go to Walt Disney World again, though.

Maura: “Yes! I promise I’ll be a good girl! I want to see Donald, and Minnie, and Daisy, and Mickey, and Goofy!!! Oh, and Pluto, too! Please mommy??”

Maya: “Yessss! I’d love to go back sometime.” She said, in a reserved, I-don’t-want-to-seem-overly-excited-because-that’s-not-cool sort of way.

Me: “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” 😉