The Spirit of the Season

I’m an only child, and as such I’m quite selfish.  I feel that being aware of this and openly admitting it helps–others would disagree.  But sometimes, very rarely, I do something to make someone else happy.  Even less often, that person I’m making happy is my husband.

For days, my husband and I have been going back and forth on what to do with our spring long weekend trip.  We settled on Orlando and booked the flights–he’s going to be joining me at the end of the Mother-Daughter Disney trip.  In my world, we were going to stay in Disney and I was going to get to have a split-stay at two different Disney properties.  But then my world came tumbling down when the only resort we actually liked AND could afford became unavailable (damn you convention center!)  Thus began the great Orlando debate of 2010.

I wanted to stay in Disney.  I was even willing to stay in a ‘moderate’ resort, complete with overly bright counter service restaurants (shudder!)  He wanted to go to Universal, complete with a four night stay in the most expensive Universal resort (because, he said after much research, it was ‘the least kid-friendly’). Guess who won?  Drum roll please…HE did!

Somewhere in the middle of the travel book section of Borders I came to a realization–the spirit of the holiday season has two main messages, and were I to book the hotel and vacation he wanted, I would be respecting both.  Message one–do things to make other people happy.  It would make my husband so happy to be able to take a 15 minute cab ride from the airport and then stay put ‘on-property’ at Universal.  It would make him happy to stay in the super-fancy Italian-themed hotel with the three pools.  It would make him jump-up-and-down little kid happy to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  So why not grant him that wish?  Isn’t that what the holiday season is all about?

The other message of the holiday season–spend more money that you’d typically be ok with.  So I booked the trip.  Universal, here we come!

I hope he's this happy! (though this IS in Disney!)