Surprise, Mom!

I'm currently on vacation in Arizona. This is the first time off I've had all year so I'm trying to be as lazy as humanly possible, but I thought a little bit of blogging was warranted in this case.

I'm staying at my sister's place. An old friend of mine is moving in with her, temporarily, but this involved moving from Iowa to Arizona. My mother came along on the road trip to visit my sister. Having my friend, mom, and sister all together like this was great timing, because I've been needing a vacation. I decided to make it a little interesting by keeping my vacation a secret from my mom.

I flew in around lunchtime on Sunday. My aunt picked me up at the airport and took me to my sister's house while all of them were out having lunch at the Iowa Cafe. (Yeah, I don't understand either.) I was waiting for them when they got home.

I listened for them to open the door and come in, then I came around the corner to see… my mom facing the wrong direction. So I stood there quietly until she turned around, said, "hi, mom!", and watched her jaw drop. She was speechless and very happy to see me.

Then we all started laughing. Keeping this a secret just barely worked. My family is pretty chatty and it was almost leaked to my mom several times. It's amazing how quickly rumor becomes accepted truth. The only people I told about this surprise were my sister and the friend who was moving. I had also told my cousin that I was thinking about doing it, but that was several weeks ago and before I bought my airline tickets. (She says that she heard I was definitely going from her dad — but how could he have learned?)

I heard about some fun miscommunication, too. The night before my flight I was talking to my friend, mom, and sister on the phone and we were all playing it cool. My friend wasn't sure what time I was getting in and I was able to say 11 o'clock. That caused trouble at lunchtime because my friend didn't know the whole plan. My sister knew I was going to sneak into her house while they were out at lunch, so she knew she had to get everyone out of the house. My friend thought I would arrive while they were home. "I'm hungry, let's go out for lunch!" "No, isn't it too early <wink> for lunch?" "No we should really <blink> go now." "But it's going to be so busy <wink> <blink> right now." "I don't care, we should really go now! <blink> <wink>"

To make things worse, my mom didn't want to go out for lunch at all. And when she got talked into it she wanted my aunt to come along — the same one who was to pick me up at the airport! Aaak!! My aunt was able to free herself without arousing suspicion, they all went to the restaurant, and everything worked out. :)