Today I wanted to share the first part in our Ireland/London adventure with you! It was almost exactly one year ago when I received a message on Instagram “Well hey there! We love the Olympic spirit!…” it started. “You are an eligible winner.” Surely this was a scam! A few days prior, I had entered a video of Arthurbear in a contest run by Air Canada, and while I thought it was the cutest entry they could possibly receive, it was still a shock to read those words. The prize, 2 round trip tickets, anywhere in the WORLD, their airline flies, these are the things dreams are made of! The message went on to ask for me to send some additional information to the customer service rep, and while still suspicious, I decided I’d play along, at least until they asked for my credit card number and my mama’s maiden name! Turns out, it was the real deal, we were WINNERS!
At the time of the contest Arthur was obsessed with The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom. He would play his little guitar and sing his heart out. I figured, why not capitalize on his new found desire to perform and share a video with my sales group on facebook! It was fantastic, there was so much positive response and Arthurbear really seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention (as if that was new around here). My friend Kaitlyn saw the video and encouraged me to enter the Air Canada contest, and the rest as they say, is history!
Now I don’t want this to come across the wrong way, we are so grateful and still in complete disbelief that we won such a significant prize…but… it came with some big decisions to make! First of all, who would go? Could Taylor get the time off work? We were not planning a family vacation last year, so there was no budget to dig into for a third person. We also were dreading the idea of traveling abroad with a car seat using child. So after much discussion, Taylor and I decided that Arthur would stay behind and enjoy a staycation with his grandparents, as well as a pretty epic shopping spree at the LEGO store, while we used the prize!
After considering black out dates (which put us in most hot destinations over their winter), and vacation days from Taylor’s job, as well as our budget for food and accommodations, we ruled out a few dream destinations like New Zealand (too cold), and South Africa (too pricey)! One location we both were very interested in, was Ireland! When Taylor learned that he could get time off over their first ever Spartan Race he was sold, and when I saw how affordable flights to London were in time for the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle… it was a done deal! We booked our trip and started planning!
On Mothers Day 2018, we set off on an adventure I want to share with you here on my website! I soak up any opportunity I have to travel, and have learned many lessons along the way. There are things I think we did right, and others where we made some mistakes that ended up costing a whole lot more money or wasted some precious travel time! I hope that in sharing my travel stories, you will be able to avoid the same mistakes and enjoy your own travel experiences to the fullest! Get ready in the next few weeks to hear more about this, as well as some other of our awesome travel adventures!
Leave a comment below and let me know where would you go, if you won free flights anywhere in the world?
Love ya,
Leave a Reply