alan's birthday

alan's birthday is in february.

so is my mom's birthday, and my stepdad's. one of our out-of-town friends and six of my good girlfriends have february birthdays too. by the time you throw in valentine's day, february gets to be pretty exhausting. which is not really a good excuse, but inevitably what happens is that i never make a very big deal about alan's birthday. it's not his fault, and it's not fair, but for the most part he takes it like a champ.

but this year i wasn't having it. he's the most specialest person in the whole wide world and he deserves to be celebrated, especially on his birthday!

so i planned a surprise trip - i booked the flight and the hotel and i talked to his boss and got him a whole week off of work. i kept it a secret for as long as i could, but i ended up telling him about it on the tuesday before we left. i'm no good at keeping secrets anyway, but i also know that he likes to be able to look forward to a vacation.

we had a small birthday party for him at our apartment on friday night and on saturday morning we got on a plane to florida. we spent four nights visiting with my dad and my grandpa. we did nothing but relax and sleep in and go on walks and nap every day. we read a lot and didn't watch much television. the weather was blissful and the company was good.

after that we headed down to orlando and spent three nights at disney world. i had taken alan to disney world for the first time in his life the summer before we got married. we'd spent the day at epcot and it was the most fun ever. this time we had three whole days and two park-hopper passes and we went to all four of the parks. the lady at the ticket counter gave alan a "happy birthday" pin and we wrote his name on it with sharpie. i made him wear it every day, and every day at least one person wished him a happy birthday.

we spent the first day at epcot - we ate lunch in england and dinner in china and watched the fireworks that night. the next day we went on all the best rides at magic kingdom, and then we went back to epcot to eat dinner in france. on the third day, we went to animal kingdom in the morning for more rides and lots of animals and then spent the afternoon wandering around hollywood studios. by the end of that last day we were way overstimulated and beyond exhausted. we ate pop tarts in our hotel room for dinner that night. it was my favorite dinner of the trip.

i think we did a pretty good job of really celebrating alan's birthday. but most importantly, we got to spend an entire week just the two of us.