Yesterday was my last day of work for the 2024-2025 school year and I was tying up some loose ends, including looking at my year-end leave balances.
I've written about how strongly I feel about using my leave on a few different occasions (most notably in two particular posts, No More Unused Leave and Personal Days, both in 2021).
When I was a classroom teacher, I used to get ten sick days and three personal days (two of which could be carried over to the following school year if left unused), but my leave allowances are now a little different. I have a longer contract in my current coaching position, which means I get eleven sick days per school year because of the extra days I now work. Additionally, thanks to my union working hard and negotiating on our behalf, all teachers now get five personal days per school year (which convert to sick leave at the end of the year if left unused). With the length of our contract day being seven hours, this means that I now get 77 hours of sick leave per year and 35 hours of personal leave per year.
Are you familiar with the concept of "Die with Zero" attributed to Bill Perkins? At its core, it's the idea that you should focus on using your resources to live a rich life (however you personally define that) rather than focus on accumulation and dying with a sizable amount of unspent wealth. This seems to be a particularly applicable philosophy when thinking about how important I believe it is to use my sick and personal leave!
I say that knowing that I am eyeing retirement in a few short years, while teachers with many years left in their careers are in a different stage of life than I am and may not be in a position to use all of their leave each year.
I also say that while simultaneously acknowledging that I don't have children who might get sick, potentially requiring me to take extended time off to care for them (although this type of concern was always in the forefront of my mind during the years my mom was very sick and I was extremely conservative with my leave during those years).
But for me, with only a few years left in my public education career? I have absolutely no interest in accumulating any leave because I know first hand just how little it will be worth if I don't use it and instead "cash it out."
Conversely, the leave holds incredible value to me in terms of using it throughout the school year for appointments and for when I don't feel well. The privilege of being able to stay home when I'm under the weather is priceless. The privilege of knowing I will still get a full paycheck even if I have to miss work is one I don't take for granted.
But I am no longer focused on accumulating leave the way I was early in my career. I will NOT be burned again like I was back in 2012 (please see those other posts for details)!
As I've written about previously, teachers are often made to feel guilty for using their leave; I will not be made to feel any kind of way other than super savvy for not being taken advantage of! This leave is "sold" to us as a benefit and I'm going to use that benefit the same way I use the ride share, restaurant, or travel benefits that come with my credit cards.
I do have a reasonable balance of unused sick leave that I'm keeping for any unpredictable "just in case" scenarios, but my goal at the beginning of this school year was to not accumulate any additional leave starting in July 2024 through the remainder of my career, so I am extremely pleased with myself in terms of the leave I used this year!
I used all 35 hours of personal leave this year!
I used all of this year's 77 hours of sick leave in addition to 5 hours I had banked from previous years!
As far as I'm concerned, leave is meant to be used and I plan to continue not accumulating any additional hours for the remainder of my career, opting instead for the "earn and burn" approach that has served me so well this year!
A few months ago, I realized that I had three personal days left to use before June 30, so C and I decided to go to Disneyland, since its 70th anniversary celebration was getting underway. If you know anything about the cost of day tickets, you'll understand how we very easily talked ourselves into buying annual passes and made plans to go a few times over the course of the year to get our money's worth!
We flew from BWI to LAX on June 16, and if there's one thing I'm looking forward to about retirement in a few years, it's the ability to fly at non-peak times. Flying at 10:30 pm on a Monday night meant there were only 55 passengers on the 140-seat plane!
We landed before 1:00 am and stayed at the Hyatt Regency at the airport for one night before taking an uber over to Disneyland on Tuesday morning!
our AP magnet
we had some time to hang out in the airport lounge before our flight
I really appreciate Southwest posting this (and making many announcements) before boarding!
I absolutely love Los Angeles!
the hotel at the airport was quite nice and I wouldn't hesitate to stay there again
for the first time ever, I was able to get a pic of this classic airport sign bc it was right across from the hotel!
We stayed at the Villas at Disneyland Hotel, which is a new tower at the Disneyland Hotel that opened in 2023. We were really looking forward to staying there for the first time, and it did not disappoint!
the headboard has a castle on it
and the whole thing can light up
the details are amazing
the design on the murphy bed when it's up
the headboard design inside the murphy bed when it's pulled down
more details!
inside one of the closets!
"dreaming of a great big beautiful tomorrow"
We noticed these really cool colored tiles outside the entrance to the hotel; I admired them, but didn't give them much more thought until a few days later when I noticed some signs, which I stopped to read. It turns out those colored tiles are incredibly significant! They're the color palettes of some of the Disney Animated Classics! Once again, I'm completely blown away by the amazing details that are just about everywhere you look when you're at a Disney park or resort!
loved it because of the colors, but didn't really pay attention to it in any way
these are the signs I noticed a few days later
so the left column is Frozen, the middle column is The Jungle Book, and the right column is Mulan
on the other side of the building, there were more signs
so these columns, left to right, are: Alica in Wonderland Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs The Lion King The Princess and the Frog Sleeping Beauty
Over the years, we've attended many special/ticketed/after hours events, mostly at WDW, but a few at Disneyland and we had two scheduled for this trip. The first was Pride Night, and it was one of the very best after hours event we've attended! I loved everything about it! The theming, the entertainment, the snacks...worth every penny of the cost of the tickets! I also got to cross of an item on my Disney Bucket List, which was meeting one of my favorite Disney artists, Jerrod Maruyama. He did a piece for Pride Night and even if he hadn't been there for a signing event, I would have bought the print because it is perfection! But he DID do a signing event and I waited in line for over an hour to meet him and he was the most lovely, down-to-earth gem of a human! We chatted while he signed my print and he a sketched a little Mickey on the inside of the print as well. Meeting him is one of my favorite Disney memories now!
the inspiration for the art
the print I bought - rainbows, space, & Mickey? win, win, win
he drew this inside the print for me while we chatted
I absolutely loved meeting him!
We had also really been looking forward to seeing the new World of Color show and paid to attend a dessert party that came with preferred viewing. We did this last summer and absolutely loved it and I wish I could say this year was just as great, but alas, I would be lying. The desserts themselves were throughly underwhelming given the cost of the tickets (note that I don't have a single pic of the food), the service was well below the Disney standard, with each cast member responsible for far too many tables, and the new show? Awful. That's the only word I can come up with to describe it. The original World of Color show was incredible, and the changes over the years to include newer movies and characters have always been very positive. The version we saw last year was SO good! This new version was so terrible than not only was I disappointed, I was angry at the money we'd wasted on the event. The show included Turning Red and Wish, which were not exactly blockbusters, as well as, of all things, A Goofy Movie, which is not even a Disney Animated Classic! Who designed this show?!? Almost two weeks later and I am still annoyed! Zero stars!
Of course one of the best things about Disney parks is the food! For the most part, we ate at quick service places and snacked throughout the day, but we did do three sit down meals at our two favorite restaurants at Disneyland - Cafe Orleans and Lamplight Lounge. We also met my friend Brian for dinner over at Grand Californian and it was great to see him!
three cheese monte cristo... one of our favorite Disney meals ever!
The Matterhorn & a Matterhon Macaroon
possibly the best Disney snack in any park!
a Baymax macaron
Baymax bread in San Fransokyo
a second visit to Cafe Orleans
strawberry shortcake macaron & banoffee tart
Black Spire Brew in Galaxy's Edge
our final snack before leaving... another raspberry macaron!
loved hanging out with Brian... hopefully we'll be able to get together on our next trip, too!
Another thing Disney Parks are known for? Parades! We saw three parades while we were there: the Celebrate Happy Cavalcade, the Better Together Parade, and Paint the Night. The first two were cute, but Paint the Night is amazing! Disneyland deciding to bring it back for the 70th Anniversary celebration was a major contributing factor in our decision to buy Magic Keys and make a few trips to Disneyland!
the outfits are super cute!
So you know that famous line in Mean Girls? "Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen!" That's how I feel about A Goofy Movie and in particular, this Max character. I cannot stand him! A Goofy Movie is not a Disney Animated Classic and I wish people - and Disney! - would stop trying to make both Max and the movie cool. They are not!
I thought Russell riding Kevin was adorable!
I'm not really a fan of Luca, but I thought this was a cool float!
I took MANY pictures of the Slinky float, which is my absolute favorite parade float ever!
this float broke down and caused the parade to go into a holding pattern
three female cast members came to investigate
and they ended up pushing the float along the parade route for at least as long as we could see them!
Two of the things that set Disneyland apart from WDW are the live musical performances that happen and the characters that roam around freely and interact with guests (two examples - we saw Cruella de Vil riding one of the Main Street vehicles with guests, chatting and cackling away, and we also saw the Evil Queen and Snow White doing cute poses in front of the castle with an adult guest before sashaying through the crowd with her while holding hands). The interactions are so much more organic than the meet-and-greet model!
I "won" a button from The Straw Hatters because I was able to correctly identify the song they were playing (The Time of Your Life from A Bug's Life)
Disneyland Band
Both theme parks are a lot of fun, although it felt like we really spent the majority of this trip in Disneyland. That's how it kind of goes; some trips we spend more time at California Adventure and other trips we spend more time at Disneyland!
There are obviously lots of parallels between Disneyland and WDW, but there are definitely a few areas in which Disneyland falls short. The first is security, which is a bit of a joke compared to WDW. It's extremely inefficient and not particularly effective in terms of all of the items I watched get passed around the metal detectors that were not searched or flagged. The second is the entry point for the parks, which were also ridiculously inefficient and very ineffective. The lines are so long to get through security and then to get into the parks and Disneyland really needs to get it together in both of these areas! On the flip side, there are things at Disneyland that we prefer over the WDW versions - namely some of the attractions, like Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and It's a Small World - and there's an atmosphere of charm and magic that exists in Disneyland that makes it incredibly special.
June 20 was my mom's birthday and she would have turned 76. We went to Oga's Cantina and toasted to her with Star Wars themed drinks, which she would have loved. Miss you so much, Mom!
I have no doubt she was celebrating her birthday out among the stars
Our red-eye flight home was on Saturday, so after spending most of the day at the parks, we picked up our bags from the hotel and took an uber to the airport around 4:30 pm. We had plenty of time to go to the airport lounge and the flight itself was uneventful. We landed at BWI around 4:30 am and picked Avalanche up from his dog hotel later in the day. It was a super fun trip and a great way to kick off summer, even though my summer didn't officially begin until 4:00 today, which is June 30 (I'm writing this in the car as we drive to Canada)!
one of my schools is doing something cute this summer, kind of like Flat Stanley - we each got a green "edu-gator" and we are taking pictures of them during all of our summer fun, so of course I had to get a pic of mine at Disneyland!
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