SURPRISE!!!

Many of you know we have had this great plan to surprise Charlotte, Joel's mom, with our return. She knew we were coming back, we just told her we were arriving next week. We had a plan to just walk into the house very nonchalantly and see her reaction.

Our plan was a bit disrupted by a long delay in Atlanta. We ended up arriving almost 2 hours late. Joel's brother, Jason, kept Weldon, their dad, up to date with the timing. Charlotte had already gone to bed and we debated on 2 new plans. 1) Have Dara and Dade crawl into bed with her and ask her to scoot over. The worry with this one is that she might twist her back which has been giving her a rough time. 2) Sneak quietly into the house, go to sleep, and let her wake up in the morning with all of us here. This was my favorite, but not very realistic. (What a surprise that would have been.)

In the end, Weldon woke her up and told her that Jason and his girlfriend, Tammy, were stopping by (at 11 pm) on their way back from Ft. Worth. So when we arrived, we all just walked in the back door like our original plan. She was wonderfully surprised and only hit Weldon a few times. I am so proud of him for being able to keep the surprise alive. It would help you to understand how these two people love surprises but struggle with keeping them. At best, they will tell you, "I have a surprise for you but I'm not gonna tell you!!!" It's not uncommon to get early Christmas presents because they are just too good to keep hidden. So for Weldon to have pulled this off is stupendous!

Thank you everyone for your prayers as we traveled. We could not have asked for the kids to be any better. It was great. I will write again before too long. Right now we are just soaking it all in.