Happy Thanksgiving!

I woke up early, because I couldn't sleep, I was too excited about surprising Mom and Dad. There were so many different scenarios to play out in my head, until I eventually decided to go with the plan that Nikola had done when he surprised his father in Australia, of hiding in the car after my brother and sister-in-law had already gone into the house, and then coming in five minutes later when everyone wasn't expecting it.

So I got up and went downstairs to have some breakfast, and was quite delighted to discover that my brother and sister-in-law had bought plain Cheerios for me to have for breakfast. How I miss the regular old Cheerios in the plain yellow box!

Then the next door neighbour came over with a quiche, asking if she could use our oven to cook it in, since their oven was already in use cooking a 22-lb turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner later that afternoon. Once the quiche was done however, we went next door with it, where we had a breakfast of french-toast bagels, pumpkin cream cheese, quiche and fruit salad. Apparently one of their young daughters has Lyme Disease, which I was surprised at how readily people in New England can contract that from tick bites. Hopefully after enough anti-biotics however, she'll recover.

After breakfast, we came back to our place, showered, and got ready to go to Topsfield. I talked to my brother and sister-in-law the whole way down about my plans for the big surprise, pointing out that we really only had one shot to get this right. My brother warned me however that things might come up, that it might not work out the way I'd had it planned in my head, and in such cases I would just need to roll with it.

Indeed, as we pulled into the driveway of my aunt and uncle's house, there was my Uncle Johnny standing in the driveway. Why was he there? Who knows? As we pulled up, desperate to preserve the surprise, we all put our fingers to our lips and began making "shhhhh" faces.

I'll give my uncle credit, for despite being sometimes a little bit slow on the uptake, you could see the lightbulb go off in his head, and instead of hugging me and making a big scene, he ushered us all into the garage and signalled that I should hide on one side of the refrigerator they have there in the garage.

He then opened the door into the basement on the other side of the refrigerator and called out, "Okay everybody, Dave and Mollie are here, so let's go!" Apparently we had arrived just as they were planning to take the dogs out on a pre-dinner walk. At that, everyone then filed out of the house, walking through the garage and right past where I was hiding! Literally, if I had just reached out and touched somebody's arm, or the dogs had been curious about an unusual smell, or anybody had simply turned around and looked behind them, the gig would have been up. I could barely restrain myself from laughing as everybody cluelessly walked past me.

Then, once they were all out on the driveway, I wondered, "When should I come out?" After all, my brother and I had not had a chance to discuss this plan, as it was entirely made up on the fly with us just making frantic hand signals to one another. So I waited, and waited, and almost was just going to walk out, when my brother called out somewhat loudly, "I've got my camera!" I figured that must be his signal, so I walked out of the garage and asked, "Wait! Are you going to leave without me?"

My parents could not have looked more floored, as they obviously had NO CLUE that I was coming. (I'd always wondered if somehow somebody would have given away the surprise, but from the expressions on their faces, it was obvious that we'd succeeded in our surprise). They both just really started shrieking and yelling and hugging me, just entirely disbelieving that I was really there. And the best part was that my brother had the camera out and shooting, and so caught some great photos of the moment as it was happening. They were so surprised!

I was actually surprised as while my dad NEVER cries, he actually started getting really teary. Who knew that just having his daughter show up unexpectedly could provoke such an emotional reaction? On the rest of the walk, he spent a lot of time with one arm around me and one around my brother, just apparently grooving on having both of his children there together at the same time. My mother as well kept walking along holding my hand, equally just wanting to reassure herself that I was actually there, I guess.

Upon seeing the photos later, my boss remarked to me, "You obviously have parents who love you very much." It was funny, as that's so obvious to me that I never really think about it, that I have this marvellous family where they all love me and think I'm absolutely perfect, that a surprise visit is just the best surprise ever. Yet, I really am incredibly lucky to have that, as so many people do not. One more thing to be thankful for.

We then all went on a walk in the nature preserve with the dogs, and by the time we got back I was really quite hungry. Luckily, it was just about time for dinner, and we totally loaded up on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and everything else. I ate way too much, but then of course it was so delicious I couldn't resist trying to stuff in just a little bit more! My uncle said a lovely prepared grace, and we went around the table discussing my 12-year old cousin Clarence's homework assignment for the vacation, where he had to list 100 things he is thankful for. Of course, it's easy to go with the obvious ones like "friends" and "family", although I definitely put "airplanes!" on my list!

After dinner, we tried to play board games, but generally gave up out of boredom. I then spent some time listening to my aunt's stories of her deployment in Iraq, but I was so tired (those triptophans from the turkey!) that I could barely keep my eyes open. Everyone else seemed to agree that we were all too sleepy to cope anymore, so it was all time to go off to bed!