For some reasons we get very unlucky with what we spend on our pets. Perhaps the real reason is we don't pay on the front end, we adopt dogs, so instead we pay on the back end.

Anyway last year I think I mentioned our dog we adopted in October 2018, a gorgeous standard poodle, was diagnosed with immume mediated thrombocytopenia. It's an autoimmune disease where his body attacks his platelets. We've spent a fortune this year, I'm not adding it up, on medications, and going to the vet every 1-2 weeks for blood draws to measure and see if it's being controlled.

Well it's been a year on steroids and lots of medications and it's not. The long term steroids usage is causing cyst formation and we are at a crossroads. We've been trying to lower his dosage and medications but it's not working. His platelets if they go lower he'll likely bleed out and die.

We were kicked off our pet health insurance I bought because we just bought it and had no idea about background. Anyway we'd have gone over the lifetime $10k limit probably anyway with nationwide and I'm not sure they would have covered all of this treatment. It's more for in case of injury kind of deal.

But he's a fabulous dog. He's 2.5 years old, great shape otherwise and seriously the best dog either of us have ever had. He's super well behaved, really smart. I mean ridiculously smart. DK1 teaches him trick in an hour. He can open doors with his paws. He totally gets our routines, can hear our cars up the street, and just is really a great dog. I don't know if all standard poodles are this smart, but even the dog trainer we worked with said he's EXTREMELY well adjusted, smart, and perfect.

The dog trainer we hired was used by the rescue group we got him from and he'd kept him. He'd used our dog as a training dog for other dogs who were aggressive or shy. He was so even keeled, well mannered, good size that he was perfect. We used the dog trainer so we could control him off leash with voice commands and walk perfectly. He can place easily for 60 minutes outdoors. He can walk without leash and sits in the car perfectly and can be walked by our kids.

So anyway we are at the point of having tried all medications. So the vet suggested that we remove his spleen and his cysts. The surgery will cost $5-7k. I'm a little nervous however because of his low platelet level that surgery is dangerous. This is the same scenario of what happened with our last dog that we had to put him under to remove his cracked tooth or put him down. The cysts also had a rare strain of bacterial infection because of compromised immune system.

I guess I'm just freaked out. I hope this works out. What we're hoping is to reduce his immune response and while he will be compromised without his spleen(he already is majorly immune compromised) he can reduce his medications and we can keep him at a relatively normal level and ease off of weekly blood checks. Something like 2-4 times a year.

Maybe it would have been better to buy a dog next time. But I feel guilty even from a breeder. Who knows. I'll update again in a couple weeks after we do an ultrasound to confirm we can and should do the surgery. Fingers crossed. If this works he'll have another 8-10 good years with us. He's truly been a great addition to the family. He sleeps with us and the kids and is so big and funny he climbs right in bed when we read books and love to just sleep all day.

So then on Monday 10/14 night we checked into WDW Marriott Swan hotel. Unfortunately for us the power went out that day in half the hotel. So checking in took over 1 hour and it was a ZOO. Had we known we'd have gone to eat out before arriving at the hotel and assuming we could eat there. The restaurants were closed and we had to go to the Dolphin and it was busy.

So besides the parking how much spending did we do? We spent $64 on magic bands to make using our fastpasses easier. It really helped with the kids. I sort of wish there was a way to buy express passes for disney like Universal or buy more fast passes. I hated waiting in lines and while we mostly skipped anything with lines, because of our compressed time frame it would have been nicer to have all rides planned.

I want to add we stopped at publix and bought 8 pack of coke and 8 pack of powerade to drink in the park daily. The kids each had a bottle of powerade and water daily and we refilled. DH had cokes and I had water. This saved us on paying park prices but was only possible because we had a car to shop. If we were really frugal we'd have packed lunches daily and lots of snacks. But I felt like part of the fun was eating disney themed food.

But 10/15 we went to HS by boat and we spent $103.70 on food for the day. We mobile ordered at Docking bay 7 while doing the millenium falcon ride during EMH and it was good. The ride was awesome and we waited around 40 minutes. Other than that counter service we ate at the Epcot food stands for dinner. We made it to Epcot riding the gondolas which took around 30 minutes. Then we drove that night to AK for the River of lights show. We did Frozen, star tours, and Buzz on fast pass 2x and I snagged the River of lights on my phone. Other than that we didn't really wait in line for anything else.

On 10/16 we went to AK and took and uber round trip $22 including tips. We spent $177.54 on Food at Harambe Cafe for lunch (mobile ordered), snacks at cart, and dinner again at Epcot. We loved animal kingdom just walking around and doing a few rides. I wish we had more time to spend there. We did the Navi River, Kali Rive, and Safari bus on FP and did shows rather than wait in lines. We did dinner at epcot because I snagged FP at 6 pm for soarin. Then off to bed because we were up early for AK

The next day we went to EMH @ AK and waited 45 minutes for the flight of passage ride. We had fast passes for 10/19 but weren't sure we would do it. It was great. We ended up ubering there and back again for $25. We also took an uber from the Swan to the front of Epcot since it was our epcot day for another $10 instead of the free boat because we were running so late and about to miss our test track FP. We also did nemo and space on FP. Then we waited in our longest line probably 60 minutes for Frozen ride. I couldn't get fast passes no matter what.

Then we headed back to the hotel early around 3 pm and swam. Our meals for that day at epcot was $129.33 mostly because DH and I had I believe 3 drinks each. We also went to dinner at Todd English Blue Zoo for ~$125. It was nice. So we spent around $255 for food.

On Friday again we used uber to get to magic kingdom when they opened for EMH at 7 am. I took the uber to the contemporary hotel. It was 10.91 and worth every penny. We did the 7 dwarf train in 25 minutes, winnie the pooh, haunted mansion, it's a small world all before 8:25 FP to buzz lightyear. then while in line waiting for the train I got a reservation for breakfast at Be Our Guest at 10 am so it was our "brunch" for the day. The meal cost $109.70. It was nice but not really worth it. The kids I guess aren't huge Beauty and the Beast fans so they didn't care much about the castle or seeing everything. It was a nice break.

Then we did our splash mountain and peter pan FP and pirates and called it a day after seeing a few shows. We left the park by 2 pm because I had reservations at mama melrose's for Fantasmic dinner packages at 5 pm at HS. It took us an hour to get to our hotel after waiting for the bus. Then we took the boat to HS from the swan. If my DK could have walked to Contemporary I would have uber it back. The meal including tip was $152. Well worth it. Mostly because I couldn't get FP for the show and I liked not waiting in line for it. Plus we had a nice sit down meal and rest. The show was amazing and we loved it. It started to rain so we bought 4 WDW ponchos for $48. Turns out we needed it the next day. So our daily food total was $261.

We went back to HS to ride slinky dog at 730 am in a torrential downpour 10/19. There was NO LINE because it was POURING. I mean hurricane Norman was heading to florida. Then we rode the millenium falcon 3x in 1 hour before 9 am and the park opened and the line jumped to 90 minutes even in the rain. We checked out of the hotel and grabbed sandwiches to share for $20 in the lobby. We went to AK and rode Pandora 2x for DK1 and myself. DK2 and DH went to walmart and bought extra socks and long pants for the kids. We didn't know where the pants they wore coming was. It was in the mess of dirty laundry and our socks were soaked. So they shopped at walmart for 2 hours and we enjoyed the AK. We left by 1 pm AK and headed to tampa. We had a fabulous lunch at Ulele for $110 including tip then off to the airport for our 6 pm flight home.

All in all a fast and fun trip. All in our trip cost us $8500. Better than the $10k I was predicting. My surprise was how little we spent on food. $1400 for a week is probably less than what we spend here on food if we ate out 2x/day on average. But where we are eating out is expensive. Plus I think we tend to undereat when we travel so we don't have leftovers. We tend to at most order 3 meals because we know the kids can share and DH and I for the most part shared every meal.

Would the disney dining plan been worth it? Probably. We could have saved since it would have cost $175/day. But I'm not sure because a lot of our costs came from alcohol at Epcot. That would not have been covered I think in the entirety. But we would have had a lot of food.

But it really was a nice trip. The photos are great. I have to say I like how many group shots there are of us when usually it's just one of us taking a photo.

This a multi day post. My prior posts to may were deleted. Anyway how did our trip to Orlando WDW and Universal go? Great. Very nice we had a lot of fun but didn't obviously do everything. We plan on going back but who knows when?

So our tickets were $654 to Tampa for four people and leaving Tampa $853 for a total of $1507 for tickets. Our car rental (hyundai sonata) was $200 for the week all taxes and fees. Our parking was $28 for 1 day at universal and $25 a day at disney * 6 = $160. I filled up just before returning for $30. So $390 for the week. Did it beat the price of flying into Orlando? Yes. The orlando ticket price for red eye flights which we didn't want was around $1000 each way for 4 of us which was $500+ - $800 savings for tickets alone. The same daytime flight for us into Orlando was closer to $1200 for 4 of us negating any savings of flying into orlando and my DH wasn't about to do the red eye.

Plus the Uber between universal and WDW would have been $25 minimum, Uber to Universal $35 minimum, and Disney Swan to Orlando airport $75 minimum (not including tip, traffic, or surge pricing). So we were looking at another $150. If the prices for flying into orlando had been better I would have done that and used uber/lyft the entire time.

That being said we then paid $1551.85 for 1 night and two days park hopper at Universal staying at the Loews Royal Pacific. Worth it for many reasons. We did it to get express unlimited passes. Even though it was "low" season I don't know I could have survived without the minimal line standing.

We bought one adult and one child prepaid meal with refillable drinks for $55. We bought two Harry Potter wants (cho chung and hermonine granger) @ $55 each and a $35 wand stand. We only had 2 butter beers each day (total 4) 2 were covered as park snacks as well at 3 chocolate frogs for $33. We had dinner at Margaritaville $110. The night we arrived we spent $95 at Yard house and $8 in drinks at the airport. The second day we ate lunch at universal ~$35.

So the trip so far we were at $3582 with tickets, universal, souvenoirs, and food.

But my DK1 loved it. She spent hours playing with her wand doing magic in the Harry Potter world. The hogwarts express was amazing. It was definitely worth the park hopper passes. The train ride had different experiences going from Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade and the reverse. She already asked to go back again. She said please don't make me wait 2-3 years until DK2 reads all the books. So she really had a great time. I admit it was really amazing the harry potter worlds. We'll see when we go back.