Surprise!!

We arrived in South Carolina Friday Morning to surprise my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. We have been planning the trip for months, and it wasn't easy to stay quiet about it! Todd's sister and brother-in-law live just a few houses away from his parents, so the kids have been having lots of fun playing together.


Yesterday it was my birthday. For reasons that I cannot explain, I tend to be completely unaware of special days like birthdays and anniversaries, even my own. (I have forgotten our anniversary TWICE!) When I got up Saturday morning Todd and the kids were gone - my father-in-law explained to me that they had gone to get donuts for breakfast. I was a little irritated since I had made sure to get cereal for us to eat while we were here, and had explained that to Todd several times...but he likes donuts, so whatever. But when they came home, I saw a bouquet of flowers come out the van and then it occured to me "It's my birthday, they went to do something special for me."


Apparently Todd was planning on getting me some sort of Giants paraphernalia for my birthday, but at 4 AM Saturday it occurred to him that NY football is probably not popular in SC. So he got me some new cookie sheets (I desperately needed them) and a cute candle and the boys insisted on getting me roses (they will make good husbands some day!). He meant to serve me breakfast in bed, so he was not happy that I had gotten up while he was gone, but I didn't really want crumbs in my sheets anyway.


Everyone came over for cake after dinner and the kids had a great time having squirt gun fights. Gabe and his cousin John are only 8 days apart - in the first two pictures you can see Gabe pursuing and defeating John.

Cadence was probably the most aggressive of the group!

Then, out of the bushes came daddy with his big guns. He argues that it was still fair because there were 5 kids and only one of him. Forget about the fact that 4 of those kids are preschoolers and they were all equipped with tiny little dollar store pistols!

Today we went to one of the plantations where we saw gators and all kinds of birds...pictures of that later...oh yeah, happy Mother's Day!