LIAR!! First off, name that movie. If you can't, I will promptly be de-friending you on Facebook. Secondly, I am a liar. For the past three months we have been lying our asses off to family and friends in Wyoming that we wouldn't be home for Christmas. We originally assumed that my contract was a full year, which would have had it ending on January 18th. To my surprise, when I checked with HR, it ended on December 18th, presumably in an effort to save a little money and not pay me over the holday break. So, we naturally started to think, "Why tell anyone we're coming back home?" We could come home and surprise our families on Christmas, making for an excellent Christmas memory. A surprise like this gets complicated quickly. The recipe for a successful Christmas surprise includes:
1) Don't tell your three year old anything. They are blabber-mouths and are guaranteed to ruin the surprise.
2) You need a present re-routing plan. This gets into a set of sub-instructions
b) Instruct your family if they have to send presents to only send them through the USPS. They will forward packages. Make up some story about UPS and FedEx packages being stolen.
c) Setup mail forwarding through the postal service.
d) This is important. Your family will NOT listen to you on either a) or b). Have a back up plan. Ask a neighbor, co-worker or friend to re-send any packages that arrive at your house. Suck up for months ahead of time to get them to oblige.
4) Avoid all attempts to Facetime and/or Skype while packing and moving, and while living back in your old home back in Colorado (Insert your old state here).
5) Use the pictures stockpiled in Step 3 to post Facebook and Instagram updates. This will lead the world to believe you're still living in DC. Mwa ha ha. (insert your evil laugh here)
After executing Steps 1-5 to perfection, we packed our remaining possessions in the car and headed home on Friday the 14th. We stayed in Morehead, Ky on Day 1, St. Louis, Mo on Day 2 and powered through a 14 hour Day 3 to be comfortably back in our beds that night. So for 5 days, we laid low, unpacking our things while packing and making Christmas presents. Then on Saturday morning, we piled the kids back in the car and did an additional 450 miles to make a grand total of 2275 miles in the past 8 days. Short shout out ot the kids, they were PHENOMENAL travellers. Even on the 14th hour of the third day from DC to Denver, they played really nicely for the most part. They read books, sang songs and only occasionally needed a movie played, though thank God for the portable DVD player when they did.
When we showed up at the Garber house, there was only a single car in the driveway, when there should have been three. This prompted Jenn to believe that the secret was out and began to panic. We quietly walked into the house (yes, even Brynn) and heard the Garber girls talking in the living room. Brynn went first into the living room and we heard a, "Oh my God!" from Abbey as Nancy and Kath followed suit. The rest of walked into the living room as well and everyone had tears in their eyes, relieving our concerns that they had any idea this was coming. When Roy showed up a few minutes later, we surprised him in the kitchen and for the next half hour he repeated, "I can't believe it. "This is wonderful. I can't believe it. This is wonderful...". Successful surprise of the Garber family. Now onto that pesky Walker side....
We head into town as soon as possible that afternoon to see the Crafts. At this point we feel pretty good about ourselves and are excited to have the trickery done with. We park a couple of houses away from Jules and Mitch and sneak over to the doorway. The tough part about this house is the nice big window parallel to the entire walkway up to the house. Nora sees us first and exclaims, "I see Jenn and Phil!" Jules replies, "Um, no they're not here, but I forgot we do have to Skype with them in a couple minutes." (Thanks for forgetting us, Jules.) We saw Nora spy us, so we ran up to the house to the chorus of, "What!? What!? What!?" as we realized we had successfully hoodwinked the Walker/Craft side of the family as well.
All in all it was a pretty special Christmas and a great way to end the year. Just seeing everyone after being gone for so long would have been memorable enough, but to add the fun of a Christmas surprise made it something we'll never forget. We're retiring from the lying game and are looking forward to going clean in the New Year. I hope you all find yourselves surrounded by wonderful family and friends like we've been lucky enough to have for our entire lives. Merry Christmas!
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