lame title #1:The Surprise

I went home last week for 5 days. It was like a 5 day sabbatical from my real life. I have lived away from home for about 3 years and it does not get easier. I feel like I'm missing out on so much! Those people that I love are growing up without me! Thank goodness for facebook and Skype. Sometimes I find myself Skyping with my family for hours on a Sunday night. It feels like I'm just hanging out!

Anyway, here's the story about going home:

I was originally going to go home Memorial Day weekend for Abigail's graduation but I was having a really hard time finding a reasonably priced ticket. I also had to take a couple days off work so I wasn't thrilled about that. And I wanted to be there the same time Amy and Josh were there.

I had a trip with some friends to Arizona planned for the week before but on Sunday I found out that we weren't going to be able to go. On Monday I called my mom to tell her and she said, "Why don't you come home then?" I was a little caught off guard and I wasn't sure if she was serious. Then she explained that Amy decided to surprise everyone and come a week early so it would make sense for me to come that week too. I immediately started looking for a flight but everything was so expensive. Then my mom found a package for a flight and a rental car that was cheaper than just a flight so we bought it and decided to surprise everyone, including Amy.

I left Tuesday morning for the airport. Amy called me right when I got to the airport to talk about finding flights for the next week. I told her I was just "hanging out" and I talked to her as long as I could before it was my turn to go through security. Then I told her I had to go (pretty suddenly) and hung up.

Amy's flight was supposed to get to Cedar Rapids at noon but it was changed to get there about 15 minutes before my flight so it would work out perfectly. Right before they had to go pick up Amy, my mom told everyone the surprise (but not about me) and they left. My mom said she would stall as long as she could to wait for me before telling everyone. I texted her as soon as we landed and she said they were there. And everyone was waiting for me when I came out of the gate! Mom told surprised everyone just a couple minutes before I came out because they were all confused about her strange behavior (walking toward the gate instead of the parking lot, etc.). It was so fun to surprise everyone and it worked out perfectly!