Surprise!

For the last several years, I have been putting aside $20 a month in the name of Diamond's 40th birthday. As his birthday got closer, I started selling some of my scrapbook tools on Craig's List, etc. and by the time I put it all together I had enough for a quick trip somewhere in the US.

Of course Diamond knew nothing about any of this.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 10:30 Sunday morning, so I got up like I was going to my morning leadership church meetings, but came home shortly after because there was a (pretend) emergency, and Diamond and I needed to quickly head up to the hospital. (Really, it was a totally reasonable scenario.) He quickly put on his suit and we dropped the kids off at my parents before heading up to the "hospital".

About 3/4 of the way to the airport, I told him we were actually going to the airport. His first response? Grumpy.

"What about work?" Vacation time had been pre-approved

"I don't have any clothes!" Our packed bag was in the back.

"What about my Sunday School lesson?" I had organized a substitute.

"How are we paying for this?" Taken care of.

When he was finally convinced that all the details had been taken care of, he started to enjoy the process. Here he is changing into travel clothes at the airport parking lot:

"Where are we going?" was his next question. I wanted to keep him in the dark for as long as possible. While we were in line at security I taunted him; "Think of it, you could be ANYWHERE in the US by lunchtime!!!"

We got all the way to the terminal without him figuring out where we were headed. As I approached the sign which would tell me which gate was ours, Diamond said "Come on! You have to pick a side!!!" Nope! I stood right in the middle and closely looked at each and every screen.

Diamond was thinking Phoenix, or maybe New Orleans. But there were also gates leaving for Orlando, San Diego and Salt Lake. "We better NOT be going to Salt Lake!" (Reason #394 why I married him!)

As we passed by the Phoenix sign, he said "I think we're going there." "Maybe!" "Well, I'm sitting down!" So we sat in the Phoenix waiting area for a bit, then I got up and suggested we keep walking around. We basically did the same thing at the Orlando gate.

Then I spotted a flight that was boarding, headed to New Orleans and we got in line. "So we're going to New Orleans?" I told him that he should know me well enough to know that I would stand in the wrong line, just to throw him off. Then again, this could be our flight...

It wasn't until we gave our tickets to the airline worker and actually got on the plane that Diamond knew where we were going: New Orleans, LA.

I had originally envisioned a beach somewhere, but with our recent cruise, I opted for New Orleans, a place we had never been and were curious to explore. Plus Diamond had mentioned a few times that he would love to go there. Once we were settled into our seats, I handed him some travel books and he read up on "Nola" the whole way there.