What happens when you drink a bottle of wine and listen to country music?

You get homesick, that's what. Considering I hadn't been home in over a year this homesickness hit pretty hard. Normally when I'm feeling this way I just look up plane tickets to remind me as to how I cannot afford to go home. Well, this particular Saturday night, the tickets were surprisingly low. Normally the cheapest I can find tickets is around 1750 round trip. and that's if you have good timing. Around Christmas they were 3000. This time they were 1400. I was in disbelief. I woke poor Sesh up at probably 3am to ask his advice. I mean, I am going to go home eventually, so I might as well do it while it's cheap, but it's such short notice and it would be such a short trip is it really worth it? His advice was to wait until I sleep some (probably good considering the 3/4 bottle of wine I had). Sunday morning, I woke up and less than an hour later had a ticket booked for Friday. The perfect situation to surprise my family. I just needed an accomplice.

So I messaged Jess, telling her I needed her help with something. We got on ooVoo to chat and I told her I needed two favours.
1) That she arrange brunch with the family on Saturday morning
and...
2) That she pick me up from the airport on Friday night.

Her reaction was something along the lines of "What?! THIS Friday?" We both teared up a bit, but we were careful so the kids wouldn't pick up on what we were saying. The next 4 days were some of the slowest and most stressful of my life. Jess emailed the family about brunch, saying she wanted to test out her new waffle maker. We sent many excited messages back and forth as we plotted our surprise. I told the family if they arrived early enough I would ooVoo with them (my attempts to push up the time, as I knew I would be very anxious for their arrival). I nearly thought the surprise was ruined when my gmail account automatically added my flights to my calendar (which my mother can see). I quickly deleted the events when I realised they were there, and then got incredibly angry when they appeared again on Thursday. I went to the beach one last time to try and get a tan so people will believe I do in fact live near a beach. Friday morning Monica dropped me off at the airport, I boarded a plane, and 3 flights and 24 hours later I was in Moline.

This was one of the more emotional moments of the trip for me, as Kallie was there with Jess to pick me up. It was the first time I met her. She's so beautiful, like all of them are. I took her from Jess (knowing she would protest which she did after only a second), but that didn't matter. We headed to Jess's, where sneaky Ada was still awake (Mitch stayed home to put the kids to sleep so they would be surprised as well). This was a fun one as well, since last time I was home Ada was too young to remember me. Since then we've become quite good friends as I often ooVoo with Jess, but she really only knows me as the face in the computer. She was quite unsure about seeing the real me, but once I started talking to her about the pictures on the fridge (mainly about the ones with puppies) she came around, and became my best friend instantly after that. Ada even almost gave me away the next morning when she asked where Lala was, but Jess just told her in the computer. I waited anxiously downstairs. I made sure not to have any lights on so no one would see me. And right around 10 Jess told the family she would message me telling me to get on ooVoo while really sending me a text to come upstairs and then getting her camera ready to record the event.

Then this...


It was awesome. Teisha saw me through the glass, but she just sort of stared at me until I was fully through the door, at which point her voice got quite high pitched, and I love how she just paces around the room with excitement. Dad reacted like it was sort of just "Oh hey!" and then it really hit him. And Mom stared at me for quite a long time before she actually understood what was happening. You could see the gears turning in her head, and the amazement and disbelief. And obviously Alexa's squeal in the background, and Avery "How did she just disappear?" And the little stinker Grady who we think already knew I was there. It was awesome. We watched this video over and over again that day. Mom, Dad and Teisha all say they had absolutely NO idea that I was surprising them.

Such a memorable moment, one I will cherish for a lifetime. I'll put all the pictures from my trip in another post, since that's enough writing for tonight.

I can't believe how much I miss them already.

Comments

Mom said…
Best. Surprise. Ever!!!! :o) Such a great visit even with the sicknesses and snow storm. Miss you too!!
March 25, 2015 at 1:56 AM
Jessica said…
Love it. I miss that day!
March 25, 2015 at 7:13 AM
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