Surprise!

I remember a time when Jim and I used to do some spontaneous things. Nothing major. But we were free to act on an impulse. That has changed since adding 8 children and farm animals to our lives. There is just not a lot of room for spontaneity.

But we decided to get spontaneous and a little bit crazy this past Christmas.

This is a photo of the children on Christmas morning in New Hampshire. It was taken during our surprise visit.

Yes, you read that correctly. We made a surprise visit to New Hampshire. They had no idea we were coming.

A lot of people tried to gently talk us out of it. (And some flat out said we were crazy and probably shouldn’t do it). But we were not to be dissuaded.

We loaded up the sprinter with children, bedding, our stockings, Christmas presents to New Hampshire family, Christmas presents from New Hampshire family (yes, they wasted the postage), a complete Christmas meal (including a cooked turkey already sliced up), and lots of snacks, drinks, and DVDs. We drove through the night and arrived Christmas Eve morning.

We parked at the end of the long driveway (out of sight of the house) and started to slip and slide our way up. We weren’t even a quarter of the way up the driveway when we were met by Gumpy on his way down the driveway to salt it. Ever stoic, he showed absolutely NO sign of surprise and welcomed us as if we lived next door.

Just as we were about to be in sight of the house, Jim called his mom and asked if there were any wild turkeys out in the front yard. She said, “No.” He said, “Are you sure? – why don’t you go look.” All my wild turkeys were waiting and yelling for her as she looked out the window.

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve. We got to meet our new nephew, Mason. The children spent some great time with Grammy and Gumpy. We enjoyed a super turkey dinner. 😀

The children all crashed with their sleeping bags on the floor. Jim and I got the sofa bed. Next day we opened presents and then spent the entire day in the snow. It was perfect weather – sunny, no wind, not bitter cold. The children got to make use of Gumpy’s snowman kit and with Grammy’s help created a super snowman.

That afternoon we left and drove back to Indiana. We spent just over 24 hours in New Hampshire – but it was a visit and a Christmas we won’t ever forget!