Since June, we knew that this Christmas would be different than the rest. My mother, who pretty much bonds the entire family together, died of breast cancer. All of our usual holiday traditions died along with her. We talked about different ways of doing things, but we never considered travelling during Christmas — at least not until I got a random phone call one day.
On Tristan’s birthday, I delivered cupcakes to his preschool. As I was waiting for the teacher to wrap up her lesson, my phone rang. It was a guy from my church — who I actually had never met. He told me he had a condo in Orlando during the week of Christmas that he couldn’t use. He had offered it to the pastor, who couldn’t use it either. He asked the pastor if he knew anyone who might be interested and was given my name. I asked what he wanted for him and he said nothing. Of course I was interested. I’m ALWAYS up for some spontaneous travel. But I would have to check with my other half and get back to him.
After deliberating the pros and cons with Kimberlie, we decided to go for it. I called the guy back and left him a message. Two weeks passed and we didn’t hear back from him. We thought maybe he changed his mind about giving it away. Oh well, we didn’t even know if the condo was nice, near attractions, kid-friendly, or anything else about it. No big deal.
The Friday after Thanksgiving, he called me back. It’s ours if we want it. We accepted — still not knowing any other details other than the dates. We decided that we would hit up Walt Disney World that week. I have about $900 in rewards on my Disney Visa which would partly cover annual passes. Why annual passes? Because we will be right back at Disney two weeks later for the Disney Marathon.
Fast forward to now. We have all of the details. It turned out to be a 3 bedroom condo that sleeps 10, which is actually bigger than my entire house. (Too bad we can’t find anyone with Disney passes to join us.) It’s at the Bonnet Creek Resort, which would be my first choice of non-Disney accomodations in the entire state of Florida.
Every year since we’ve been married, we have watched Samantha Brown tour Walt Disney World at Christmas on the Travel Channel while dreaming of being there. We always said that when our kids get older, we would go. It looks like we will have that chance. There are only two places other than home that I would love to be at Christmas: Walt Disney World and New York City. This year, I’ll cross one of them off of my list.
