A Surprise in the Friendly Skies

WARNING: - It's a Book!

About 6 weeks ago I decided that it was time for a break. We had a lot of things going on with our church callings and work and it had been a long time since Brett and I were alone without the kids. Brett has an uncle that lives in Maryland and we have been saying for years that we were going to come and visit. Well, I did some checking, calling, more calling, arranging for kids, etc and finally decided that it was time to take the plunge and buy tickets to go on a trip.

Just me and Brett.

I didn't want Brett to know, so for the first couple of weeks only two or three people knew. Even my closest friends in our neighborhood didn't know we were going. I had talked with Brett's manager at work and arranged for the time off for him, and for several weeks I put the plan in motion. Church responsibilities had to be taken care of, work responsibilities had to be handled, our travel plans had to be archived in my inbox, and any communication of the trip had to be made in between the hours of 8am and 5pm.

A week before the trip, Brett's manager Ken, called me and told me that he would be out of town that day and that he wouldn't be able to help me pull the surprise off, but that he had arranged for a man at the office to help. I didn't know this man, but he gave me his name.

Well, just two days before we were to leave, I couldn't remember his name. I did a search on Novell's internal web site and found a few names that I 'thought' could be the person and I figured that if all else failed, I would just call them all.

I picked Brett up from work that day and he said "Sorry I was late coming to the car, I was chatting with Doug Christensen." That's it! It was Doug!

I called Doug the next morning and told him what I was trying to do and that I might need his help. You see, just a week before we were to leave, Brett came home and announced that he would start working from home on Wednesdays. Hmmm. We were supposed to leave on Wednesday, so I needed a plan set in motion if he was going to be home. Then the day before we were going to leave Brett decided that he would hold off a week from working from home. So, another plan had to be arranged just in case he went to work.

Tuesday night Brett told me he was going to work until noon and then come home. On Wednesday morning he told me that he was going to come home at 2:30 because I had asked him if he could get off early (I wanted to see if he would be willing to leave work early so that I would know which plan to execute.) In order for this to work, we needed plans A, B, C, D, etc.

Doug arranged for a couple of Brett's co-workers to help me out. One of the co-workers sits right next to Brett so he was the 'eyes' for the day. Brett likes to exercise during lunch, so our plan had to work around his exercise.

Another of his co-workers (Kevin) is on a different floor and his assignment was to lure Brett away from his desk, and then to get him outside to our car. Once Brett was lured away from his desk, our 'eyes' (Jim), would shut down his laptop and bring it to the lobby for me to pick up.

As soon as that exchanged had been made, we would give the sign to Kevin and he would get Brett into the parking lot.

My parents graciously came from AZ to watch our kids. I am so grateful to them for making the trip. They have never had my kids one on one like this and I am so thankful not only that they came, but that my kids were able to be with their grandparents.

Brett likes to be in on the planning of things. I talked to one of my friends in CO and told her what I wanted to do and asked for her creativity. She suggested that I e-mail Brett and give him a heads up that something was coming. I thought that was a great idea, so I sent an e-mail and told him that in 29 hours a surprise would happen. I think that drove him crazy.

He immediately started asking me if he could look at my credit cards to see what I was up to. I agreed. Little did he know that the purchase had been made on his mom's credit card as I knew that he would figure it out if I paid for it myself. I rightfully agreed :).

At 1:30 pm I spoke with Kevin and he told me that Brett still hadn't gone to exercise. My parents had just arrived and we were loading stuff into the car. I told him we would be there as close to two as we could as I needed to stop somewhere to pick up a gift for my mom.

We pulled into the Novell parking lot at 2:16pm. I called Kevin and told him that we were there and he said it was a good thing as Brett had just told Jim that he was going to exercise so Jim was stalling him.

The plan was now being executed. Kevin went up to Brett's desk and had him go and look at some pictures, and Jim brought the laptop to me in the lobby and then called Kevin to let him know the exchange had been made.

It was snowing terribly. I made two signs and had the kids stand outside the door of the building. One sign said "Maryland or Bust" and the other said "If you love them, Leave them". Brett walked out the door and read the sign and looked up at me a little perplexed. They all came to the car and saw that my parents were with us. Brett looked at me and asked what was going on. I told him we were leaving to go to MD and that was the surprise I had warned him about.

He said he needed to go and get his laptop and I told him I had it. He didn't believe me so we showed it to him.

At that point we headed to the airport.