2012 was a rough year for our family, but especially for Julie. She was dealing with some crappy health issues, and ended up homeschooling our 13-year old cousin for half of the school year after he was suspended. She was amazing through it all! A few months before her birthday, Lauren and I were talking about what a rock star she was and decided that we wanted to give her the BEST birthday surprise ever! A surprise birthday trip to Disneyland. Dan was immediately on board, so we started planning. For months each one of us had nightmares that someone had ruined the surprise, it was SO stressful trying to keep the secret! I got home from New York Sunday night, and the next morning - bright and early at 7:00 am - I was at mom's house to pack Julie and get on the road. We had one of her friends come over and wake her up and kidnap her. She pretended they were going to meet some of their friends for breakfast since it was Memorial Day. Julie was SO upset, her friends should know her better - planning something at 7:00 am on a holiday is just not acceptable.
Mishele and Julie drove around while Lauren and I frantically packed a bag for Julie and then we met up at Ikea. We had put together some music to give her a clue as to what was going on, so with Julie still blindfolded, we all got out of the car and played the Disneyland Train conductor's opening monologue and then pulled off her blindfold so she could see all of us in our Disneyland hats.
It took us awhile to convince her we were serious - she didn't want to believe us and get her hopes up, if then we said, well, we wanted to take you Disneyland, but we're really just having a Disneyland themed breakfast or something! She was so shocked that we thought of everything, cancelling appointments, packing everything she might need, etc. It was a great surprise!
We got to our hotel room just as the fireworks started, and we could see them from our room. Julie took it as a sign that this was going to be a FABULOUS trip!
It was a little hard to get Lauren out of bed and going the next morning, extraordinary measures were needed.
But we were finally on our way!
Hannah and I, per usual, took one for the team on Splash Mountain
We had to ride Big Thunder Mountain A LOT since that is Julie's favorite ride.
But the best picture of day was on tower of terror. We decided that we should all hold hands for the pictures. There was a stranger sitting next Hannah, so she turned to him and held her hand out and said "solidarity?" He just kind of laughed and turned away, so then Hannah turned to him again and said, "I can't believe you're not going to hold my hand!" So the poor kid took her hand for the picture! Every time we go on that ride now, we think, Solidarity!
The next day was Julie's birthday. She had to have her Dole whip float.
And we took her to lunch at our new favorite all you can eat BBQ place.
Apparently it was Julie's birthday and pink shirt day.
It was another fabulous trip to Disneyland - and we were all SO relieved that we were able to make it such a great surprise!
No comments:
Post a Comment