Holiday Surprises

You may have noticed a recent decrease in the blog updates, but there was a good reason…

Our original plan for this year was to spend christmas in cocoa beach with cindy’s family. Cindy’s sister had to work on christmas, so we started to think about changing our plans and possibly switch locations, since we would be celebrating with them after new years day. Swapping locales was something we wanted to do anyways, as it would put us back in sync with our cousins since we alternate holidays with each family. A few days after we returned from new zealand i checked into flights to chicago. Found a good deal into milwaukee, so we booked it.

Planned to make it a surprise visit, so started making up stories to my family about our xmas plans in cocoa beach. Did well in leading everyone in chicago to believe we were not coming this year. Flew out of Orlando on xmas eve and arrived in milwaukee that evening, then took an amtrak train down to glenview, illinois and finally a cab over to lake zurich. We had learned that my family was over at my brother-in-law’s parent’s house.

Pulled up the house and unloaded our luggage, then knocked on the door. SURPRISE! Definitely surprised everyone at the party, but quickly learned that my mom had gone home sick, so we’d have to rethink a plan to surprise her. Drove home later that night and planned to get up early on christmas day for our next surprise. Mom came downstairs around 9am, where cindy and i were sitting at the kitchen table. SURPRISE! Always a joy to see the reactions, which usually include a double-take and that split second where seeing you seems normal, but then the brain catches up and realizes you weren’t supposed to be here.

The surprises continued on christmas evening at the schaul family get-together and last night for the smith-gallaugher-erickson get-together. Once again cindy and i were able to pull off a great surprise visit, even with facebook updates normally informing everyone immediately.

Headed down to the city today to catch a show called “book of mormon” by the dudes who created south park, then off to dinner. A nice blanket of snow going by on the train ride this morning, definitely looks like Christmas. Based on our upcoming travel destinations, looks like this will be our only winter weather for this year.

Happy hour at Fleming’s in downtown Chicago before the Book of Mormon show nearby