When a surprise works

Our intention since the beginning of our plan was to surprise my parents with the fact that Cate and Melody flew in. I knew that if I threw a surprise anniversary party on my mother (As in, "Mum, can you look pretty in 20 minutes, because these pictures will last for years to come?") she'd probably not be my biggest fan. We decided that we'd tell them about it on the Thursday, since the party was on Sunday.

But we thought it would be awesome to surprise them a little bit. On Thursday morning Matt, Oceana, and I did all the shopping for the ship (for 4 days, and my car was packed!) and headed to Auckland (2 1/2 hours away) to great the ship. The ship pulled in around lunchtime, and we arrived while they were still clearing customs. It was perfectly reasonable for us to be there, since we had brought the groceries, and since I'd offered to come help everyone clean the ship. Usually the ship doesn't look amazing after a 10 day sail...

Havalah had been cooking for the discipleship training school in Auckland (brave girl) for 4 weeks, so she came down to say hi as well. And that wasn't unreasonable, they knew she was there anyways. I asked if we could go out for coffee, and probably got too insistant, but I knew Cate, Cate's boyfriend Drew, and Melody were waiting at Starbucks - and had been for at least an hour. My brother knew about the plan and had headed into town for "new headphones" and was going to meet us there. We arrived and I was thrilled to see it was a two story Starbucks! Cate and Drew had gone upstairs, and when Melody realised we were nearly there, she'd gone to hide out in the bathrooms. I took off upstairs to get a table lie in wait with my camera and waited for them to come upstairs.

This is when Mum realized Cate was sitting behind the alcove. She didn't see her for the first few seconds, and I thought perhaps she knew. But no, she was shocked!


Cate had to take the coffees from her, she didn't know what to do with them.

Dad took a few more minutes to come upstairs.

Then Havie went to the bathroom and told Melody to come upstairs. And this was my Dad's reaction. That, and "Oh my GOSH!" My mum was dead silent.

It was awesome!!!

And there we are walking back to the ship. Don't my parents look pretty neat in their uniforms?

More to come.