Time to let you all in on a little family tradition known as the surprise Anniversary trip. In order to appreciate the plan this year, let me explain how this crazy activity began in our household and the "rules".As you have been able to gather from my blog, I thrive on creative challenges. 8 years ago, my then fiance, now wife, gave me a classic challenge while planning our wedding: It had always been her dream to NOT know where she was going to be going for her honeymoon.. have it be a total surprise to her. I think it was that feeling of being swept into the unknown that attracted her.. to be able to leave the reception with her husband, and not have any idea what lay in the future, both short term and long term. And so I gladly obliged and began planning a "secret honeymoon". In fact, when we left our reception, no one, not my family, not my friends... no one knew were we were heading for the next week, except for me. As my wife soon found out, we went to southern California, to San Diego for Seaworld and scuba diving, then up to Disneyland.
The whole idea of a surprise trip soon morphed into a way to relive our honeymoon on an annual basis, using the same type of idea: A surprise trip. Here's how it works. Each year, we take turns planning a surprise trip for the other. The goal, is to do it in such a way that the other person has absolutely no clue that anything is even happening, so that when we make the "time to go" announcement, it hits them totally unexpectedly. Watching that "excuse me?" look followed by the smile associate with a nice getaway, is a priceless thing to pull off. The basic rules for the trip are as follows:
1. Plan a trip for just the two of us, no children.
2. Find activities that will be enjoyable to both of us
3. Do this outside of the regular family budget, so we are not hosing ourselves in whatever month we go each year. This does require a lot of careful saving of money, but since each person has 2 years to prepare, it usually isn't too hard to sneak low amounts of money away each month.
This whole approach, of planning on surprising each other, has produced some great memories... 3 years ago, I headed to the office with what appeared to be the "day from the fiery place" on my calendar only to have my wife pull me out of a morning meeting, as I discovered she'd been working with my boss to set up this crazy day, and that it was all a fake. Instead I got to spend the day relaxing in Bend. 2 years ago, it was my turn to plan and I got to enjoy waking my wife up at 6 AM on a Friday morning to announce "time to go! We leave for the airport in 30 minutes!" to her groggy surprise. Then we flew to Pennsylvania to spend a weekend in the Pocono Mountains, at a resort she discovered in college and always wanted to go to. Last year, I was wisked away to spend my weekend in the San Juan Islands, watching Killer Whales surface next to our boat while whale watching. Obviously, we have had a ball with our anniversary trips!
So this year, it's back to my turn once again.. And... this weekend it is! This year planning was much trickier than years past. With the company cutting annual bonuses this year, my financial plan for the trip was ruined and I had to go to cancel the original trip and move to plan B. So what is the trip this year? Sorry... can't tell you. My wife gets to find out first! But tonight she found out that we are going. I challenged her to a game of Scrabble, and (yes, I cheated) I had all the words I needed to spell out the invitation in scrabble words as we played. While this was a great plan in theory, it wasn't the best plan in practice, as in order to play my carefully constructed words, she had to put down words that worked with them... she didn't. How hard can it be for her to play some word that starts out with a T, that I can then build from? She didn't... but I finally, through the use of "trip" and "tomorrow" got my message across.
Was she surprised? Yes, totally! She was expecting the house to be full of kids all weekend long and be slammed with church meetings and responsibilities (thanks to my clever accomplices). So tomorrow, off we go to our 2006 adventure... that only I know...
Bwa ha ha ha ha! (my deep, evil, Calvin laugh)
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