I love my husband. He's an amazing father, a wonderful husband, he cleans and cooks and fixes things and puts up with a LOT from me. I really shouldn't complain, but...my husband is not great with surprises. He never has been. Oh, he thinks up GREAT surprises, but he just never (ever) pulls the trigger to make them happen. He always tells me, "oh, I had this great idea to surprise you, but..." and then I'm always like, "
Why? That was an awesome idea!"
So, you can imagine my surprise when, on our 10th anniversary, he hands me a folder containing all the flight information, hotel reservations, and cruise documents for our upcoming family vacation that he planned, booked, and kept
secret from me! I was shocked. We'd been talking about taking Anderson on a cruise for a while now, but I still thought it was something that we'd do in a year or so...not in 2 weeks! Disney Dream here we come!
There were more surprises to come--we wanted to keep this a secret from Anderson since we'd be going on his birthday,
and David's parents were also booked on this cruise (it was their 40th wedding anniversary) and he wanted to surprise them as well. This was VERY unlike him, but I played along!
The next 2 weeks were busy with us trying to secretly plan and pack while keeping everyone involved in the dark! We were also dealing with Sandy--would she impact our cruise? Would David have to stay home because the Coast Guard was going to be involved? We weren't sure. David was also called out of town for work for the week before the cruise. We had to arrange to have Anderson's teacher send us all his homework, I had to tell my family that they would have to pick another time to come visit (they were all coming for Anderson's birthday), plus we had to pull together Halloween costumes AND pirate costumes for all of us for the cruise. It was crazy. I felt a little bad about kinda blowing Anderson off when he would ask what we were doing for his birthday, but it didn't seem to faze him that we didn't have much planned. Or so he thought...
We were trying to come up with the best way to tell Anderson what we were doing. David wanted to just show up at the cruise terminal and let him figure it out. I wanted to do something more...fun! I checked out a few websites, gathered some ideas, and this is what I came up with:
We filled a bag with wrapped goodies that were CLUES to our adventure! Each clue was numbered 1-5.
#1--sunscreen! Not really much of a clue since we were already at the hotel in FL when he opened it (we told him we were going to the beach for the weekend).
#2--Crayons! But if you look carefully you'll see that I circled the word "Pirate". On the Disney ships there is a Pirate Party night. But, he doesn't know this yet.
#3--Disney pins! We love pin-trading! Anderson got really excited at this point, but I told him we weren't going to Disney. Now he was a little sad and a little confused.
#4--A waterproof case for his camera! Snorkeling anyone? He still hasn't figured it out...and he is still focused on the Disney pins.
#5--A picture of the Disney ship that I cut into pieces. He had to put the puzzle together and then he figured it out!! A Disney Cruise!!!!!!
Once he figured it out he was SO excited! We got on the ship on his actual birthday, and the room was all decorated for him, he got a special birthday pin, we had ordered a birthday cake for that night in the dining room, and there was ONE more surprise waiting for him...his grandparents!
Once we got on the ship we were keeping our eyes open for our last surprise. It's a pretty big ship, though, so after a while we got a little desperate and David called them under the pretense of wishing them a safe cruise while we were still in MA getting ready for Sandy to arrive. It turns out they were in their stateroom unpacking. We decided to grab some lunch, check our our stateroom, and then continued to skulk around the ship...looking for them!
Here is what our room looked like. I loved the veranda! Anderson loved that his bunk actually flipped down from the ceiling over the couch and had a ladder for him to climb!
At last David spotted his parents in the adults only section of the ship. So we zipped around to the back side, asked a Disney person permission to bring Anderson back there, and we told him to go say hello to his grandparents. I think they were surprised...don't you think? Click on my YouTube link to watch!
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