Happy Birthday Mom!
I've often heard stories about relatives showing up unannounced with varying degrees of success. A few months ago, I decided to give it a shot and purchased plane tickets to Indiana for last weekend.
My flight left at 11pm on Thursday night and I arrived at the South Bend airport, by way of Cleveland, around 10:30am. Dad took the day off of work but didn't tell Mom. He worked in the morning until I called him from the airport. He picked me up and we headed home.
For those of you that haven't been to my house, we have a quarter-mile long dirt road driveway through the woods. It's pretty easy to hear someone coming up the driveway. Dad stopped about halfway down and I walked the rest of the way. When I got close, I gave Mom a call and made up some story about her present being late because I was having trouble getting it mailed. While we were chatting, I rang the doorbell. I wish I had a picture of her reaction when I opened the door. It went from confusion to recognition to joy in about half a second. Victory! Thanks to Dad, Rachel and Luke for doing such a great job keeping the secret. I had a hard time and I live 2000 miles away.
We didn't do much, but we had a good time celebrating Mom's birthday as a family. And of course it was good to see little David again. A few pictures from the weekend are shown below and more are in the photo gallery.
On another happy note, the airlines cooperated this time. It was a series of flights that quickly fade away because they went so smoothly.
