SURPRISE!

Well, my sister is a sneaky girl! She gave me the best surprise EVER this week. Let me tell you the story.

As I’m sure you saw, last week was my birthday and my family came to visit for their Spring Break, which coincided perfectly with the week. So we spent fun days at Disneyland, the beach, and hanging out together. Then the last of them left on Saturday night. All gone, bye bye. I was doing okay for Sunday and Monday, but then on Tuesday I was having a horrible day. Like a crying, feeling sorry for myself kind of day because all my family was so so far away and I really missed them. Ali (my little sister) had called me the day before to tell me that she mailed me a birthday package and it should be coming sometime Wednesday or Thursday.

So Wednesday rolled around, and my mother in law called me in the morning to see if she could come out to lunch with us and bring me her present. Of course, I thought, the boys will love to see her and we can have a fun lunch. So we set a time for 12:30 or 12:45 for when she would be out here. I then spent the whole of the morning working on Scrap Girls assignments, and getting completely engrossed in a lot of work. I looked at the clock on my computer and it said 11:08. Plenty of time to get ready, I thought, so I continued working. A few minutes later when I glanced at the clock, however, it had gone through a warp speed tunnel or something because it said 12:12!

Now, normally this would still be plenty of time to get ready, but since my mother in law is notorious for being early, I was panicked! I jumped up, ran to the bathroom to try and get dressed and ready to go. Exactly 3 minutes later, my sister called me on my cell phone to chat. I was just finishing getting dressed. She said, “I got an email that said your package was delivered, did you get it?”

I hadn’t heard any doorbell or anything, and I was pretty sure that the kids would have let me know had someone showed up at the door with a package, but I went to check it out anyway. I headed downstairs, still talking to Ali on the phone, and opened the door. I couldn’t see a package. But normally they deliver it to the side of the porch, so I turned to look at the side when someone JUMPED out from the side of the door and scared me half to death.

IT WAS ALI HERSELF!

It literally took my brain a few long nanoseconds to comprehend that not only was I talking to her on my cell phone, but there she was at the freaking front door, standing in front of me!

As soon as I put 2 and 2 together, I screamed, grabbed her in the biggest hug and just started crying. Her standing on my front doorstep was a literal prayer answered from Heavenly Father that day and was exactly what I needed. I was completely overwhelmed that she would make this plan, that she was there and that I could have an Ali hug because I really needed one. :)

I just wish we had had a hidden camera on us so that I could have gotten that surprise on video!

And then, once my brain started catching up that this was actually happening, I had so many questions – is Jed here too? Did you drive here? You flew? How long are you staying? How did you get here from the airport? Lo and behold, my mother-in-law (whom I was starting to think would be here any minute) was in on it and had picked Ali up from the airport and brought her out. My hubby knew the whole time that Ali had been planning this (since Christmas!!) and had done a superb job of not saying anything. And I have to give a HUGE shout-out to my mom, who also knew about the surprise the whole time that she was here visiting and didn’t say a word! She didn’t even hint at it. I was completely and utterly surprised. And I really love surprises. ;)

So needless to say, we’re going to be having fun while she’s here for a whole week! I’m so excited, I just can’t believe it. I’m a very lucky and happy girl.