Anyone who knows me really well, knows I'm pretty much obsessed with Disneyland. It's almost embarrassing to admit how many Disney blogs I follow. We took our first trip to Disneyland last fall and I've been obsessed with going back since. In fact, this time last year we were in the middle of our vacation and it makes me a little more than sad not to be there again right now.
All year long I have been preparing and planning and trying to find ways to get back again. It was the most fun we've had as a family and it was a fantastic week away from the stresses of the every day life. It was amazing having that time to just focus on us. My kids have even caught onto the Disney bug and watch the vacation DVD at least once a week, though with school in session it's waned down quite a bit. (My three year old even recognizes the theme song from the DVD when it comes on the radio... eek.)
I've looked at staying off site (at a non Disney hotel), flying, driving, taking a train, taking a bus and packing all of our food in a cooler to save money. For a while I actually thought we'd make it. When I realized September/October wasn't going to fly, I settled on March. Unfortunately, mostly because we're completely irresponsible and can't seem to control our spending, March doesn't look like an option either.
This factor, combined with us trying to decide if we want to have another child, has put a serious crinkle in my Disneyland vacation plans. My husband and I have been talking a lot about putting all of our knowledge into action. We have gathered a lot of information about budgeting, saving, paying off bills etc. And yet we haven't learned one important factor: sacrifice.
Instead of sacrificing the dinners out, the extra trips to the grocery store to pick up snacks we didn't need and unnecessary trips to the movie theater, we now have to sacrifice our Disney Vacation. As much as I didn't want to sacrifice all of the small things, after all what kind of fun can you have it you can't even stop at a restaurant for lunch, I realize I'd rather have sacrificed a few more of those dinners out than my trip to Disneyland.
Lesson learned. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices and do things we don't want to do in order to get what we know we deserve or want. Over the last two months we've been hitting the gym pretty hard-core. It's hard work but we know the sacrifice will be worth it in the long run. The results have been slow but this, more than anything, has reinforced the feeling that I need to make more sacrifices.
I guess the most important thing I have been realizing is that we already know what life is like when we don't make sacrifices and we don't choose to wait for things we want. We know what the result is and we don't like it. Maybe it's time to try something new and see if we like those results better.
Albert Einstein (or perhaps Benjamin Franklin, it's debatable as to the original source) once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How true is that? Perhaps we've not been lazy all this time, simply insane. Trapped in a delusion of comfort that isn't really comfort, only self-gratification.
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