After all of this, it occurred to me that my Mom’s 60th Birthday was just the week before… so I figured it was worth conspiring with my sister to have a small celebration to surprise Mom with. She knew I was coming, but she didn’t know what was to come. All the pieces seemed to fall together, too. The weekend before, Eric realized he had to be in Daytona Beach on Thursday night, so he threw the possibility of joining us for at least Friday night. It worked out well! I ordered a cake from Publix (they have AWESOME cakes) and decided on something to make for dinner on Friday night, and just let everything else fall into place.
So Friday comes around, I jump on the plane at 7am – man that’s early! Surprisingly, I had no flight issues on the way down. All on time, upgraded the whole way… it was nice, for a change! I get there, grab my rental car, and I have some time to kill. So I stop off for a little shopping before I meet up with Eric and hit the grocery store. After some lunch, Eric and I do a quick run through the grocery store for dinner ingredients and the cake (of course!). We end up getting to my parents’ house around 3:30pm. My Mom had just gotten home with Nan after a trip to the grocery store themselves – my Mom decided to have Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday since we had all the family together (remember – at that point, she didn’t know Eric was coming). So she was unloading her car when we pulled in and she did the classic Ba… hands on the hips, jaw dropped with a smile – the look just says, “I can’t believe you surprised me like this!”
She only knew about Eric being a surprise at this point! Then we unloaded our groceries and I told her the rest of the surprise. She was very pleasantly surprised.Kristin, Gregg, and the kids got there around 7pm, and Dad got home from work shortly after. We had a nice dinner and some cake and just enjoyed the time together. Eric had to leave uber early the next morning to catch a flight home, so we stayed at a hotel down the road so he could sneak out. Well… all was well until I realized, at 4:30am, that his car keys were in my backpack back at my parents’ house! So we went over there before he took off (we had to!) and I snuck in and grabbed the keys. And no one heard me somehow! So I went back to the hotel and crashed for a few more hours before really waking up!
Saturday we had an early Thanksgiving dinner, which was really nice. It’d been a few years since I had Thanksgiving with my own family. We kept to the basics – no crazy amounts or sides. It was nice. Little did my Mom know, at this point, that there was one more surprise to come! After we cleaned up, her and I took the kids shopping for Christmas present ideas and such. What Mom DIDN’T know is that getting her out of the house was planned! While we were out, Kristin and Gregg put up the Christmas tree. My Mom is always saying she wants the tree up on her birthday… well, this wasn’t on her birthday, but it was close enough. Again, she was pleasantly surprised.
Sunday came along and I only had time to do brunch with the family before catching a flight home. But it was nice, and overall, my Jacksonville weekend was nice. But now it was time to go home. So off I went to the airport.
Now, I did the responsible thing and checked my flight status before I left. However, by the time I got to the airport at noon, the 1pm flight was already delayed 15 minutes. Not too bad. And it was weather related, so I couldn’t yell at Delta too much. But then that 15 minutes turned into a 1/2 hour. Then we missed out ‘flight departure wedding’, making it an hour delay. Thankfully, I’ve learned not to book tight connections in ATL, so I wasn’t stressing. We finally get to ATL and hour late and I look on the board for my next flight. It’s already set at a 45 minute delay. Now this I really don’t like. But it, too, was because of weather. So our plane finally gets to the gate and we’re waiting to board when I hear the gate agents murmuring something about a maintenance issue. Not good. But we board about 10 minutes later… unaware that the issue wasn’t actually resolved. It was a navigation computer issue! So we sat there. Thankfully, I was upgrade to 1st class, and they gave us drinks while we waited… the adult kind. We finally take off and head towards Indy. Somehow, after all this, I only end up 1-1/2 hours later than scheduled. But I’m beat! I head home and crash! Delta did it to me again!
But I decided not to let that destroy my otherwise nice weekend. Now it’s just a short week before Thanksgiving #2. And then, as Eric puts it, ‘Christmas Crazy’ begins!
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