Merry Christmas

Our Christmas surprise: We bought a few small gifts for the fine young gents and a lovely young lady, then we pooled the rest of our Christmas budget and some savings, and we took them to Mexico for a week-long vacation. The picture above is where we stayed. I was relaxing on the balcony, picked up my camera and snapped that shot. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

We'd been planning this for almost a year. The kids knew something big was up, but had no idea what it might be. "Is it the mall? Is it a trip to Baker?" asked the younger lovely young lady. I am terrible at keeping secrets, but I did it despite nearly blowing it several times. Thank goodness for oblivious children, eh? By Christmas Day I was thrilled to finally reveal the big secret, partly because I was so excited about it and partly because I could finally stop worrying about accidentally telling. Heh.

A little funny story: The eldest of the fine young gents opened his packing list on the outside of the big box. His mind immediately leapt to the most cool and exciting trip he could imagine: "WE'RE GOING TO GRANDPA'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The annual trip to Grandpa's is the highlight of our year, especially for the ladies and gents, who love to fish with Grandpa and work at the store for donuts and hot chocolate. So excited was he at the prospect of going to Baker City that when his sister opened the box and pulled out a Puerto Vallarta travel guide, he groaned. "We're not going to MEXICO are we?????"

Heh heh.

Obviously they changed their minds:

Our vacation was spectacularly perfect. More to come.....