BIG SURPRISE

It was a Friday evening around 10:30pm. Cindy & I were watching television and web surfing when the doorbell rang.

I looked at Cindy and said “who in the world is at our door at 10:30?” In all of just a second or two I thought it might be college kids collecting food for some scavenger hunt or something like that, but now that I’ve had time to think that through, that was rather stupid.

I looked through the peephole and saw a group of kids standing there but I couldn’t see faces. So what did I do in light of this uncertainty? Did I yell out “who is there?” like one of the three little pigs or did I open the door? Well, I opened the door of course.

It was then that I had one of the most surprising shocks of my life.

All this happened in mid January of this year. I had just celebrated my “60”th birthday a few days earlier. We hadn’t done anything special mainly because we are going on a big vacation in May so a big weekend get-away or something like that wasn’t going to happen. We were going to have dinner out with our good friends the next evening and both kids had sent cards and gifts and called so I was all set.

When I opened that door on that Friday evening there stood my family (our kids and their spouses) who broke out into “Happy Birthday” while I just stood there dumbfounded. Even now I am emotionally caught up in reliving the experience. Wow! I didn’t know what to say although that didn’t stop me from trying. I kept babbling something like “How is this possible?” and “Does this mean I’m not going out to dinner tomorrow night?” We hugged and laughed all the while they told me their fantastic tale.

I also learned that evening that my wife is a convincing LIAR!! She is also the most organized planner I know. She is wonderful. My family had been planning this since August. They had been emailing back and forth about how they could make this happen and when. Cindy had checked with my secretary about my schedule so I didn’t plan something else.

Matt & AJ had flown in from DC but their flight was delayed and they almost didn’t make it. Laura & BJ along with granddaughter Lily had come down from Denver. Cindy had me convinced that she was going to a recital with her good friend and then out for dessert. In reality she had met up with Laura & BJ at our church so they would have a place to wait for Matt & AJ to fly in. Then she went shopping for food since she couldn’t very well have all this extra food in the house if I was going to be surprised.

The whole plan came together and I can’t thank them enough. I am just dumbfounded by all the work that went into surprising me for my birthday.