SURPRISE!!!!

Last weekend, I got to give one of my best, sweetest, dearly loved heart momma friends the surprise of her life!  Her precious baby girl, Lindsay, was turning 2 and her incredibly thoughtful mom, Linda, wanted to give Suzie the best present she could think of for her daughter’s birthday.  So, she flew our family to Michigan for the weekend!!! 

Luke was ecstatic, can’t you tell??? :)

We headed out on Friday to Myrtle Beach where we caught a direct flight to Grand Rapids.  The big surprise was planned for Saturday morning at their oldest son Cole’s baseball game. 

Cruz (Lindsay’s brother) helped to pick us up from the airport the night before so he was in on the surprise, too!  This is just before we headed to the ballfield.

It didn’t go exactly as planned…

First, Suzie turned out to not even be at the ballfield.  So, we ended up surprising her husband, JR, who did not get quite as dramatic as I thought he should.  ;) (What do I say?  He’s a guy and they just don’t get all emotional the same way us girls do! )  He was shocked, don’t get me wrong…just not all obvious about it like I tend to be sometimes (okay, all the time).

So, we hung out with him and the kiddos while we waited for Suzie to come pick up Lindsay to take her to the doctor.  (Lindsay had an ear infection and after her first dose of meds was a different baby.  She was in full force by party time!)

Finally, JR told us that Suzie was parking and walking up so Scott, me and Luke went to hide behind the canteen so we could walk up behind her once she joined them.  (Wyatt was far too involved in a game of soccer by this point.)  It was all finally coming together except…Suzie walked the wrong way (to her credit, this was a surprise so she didn’t know she was supposed to be walking a certain route) and our eyes met as I was contemplating how to hide from her yet again.  She was speechless, seriously.  As in hand over the mouth and silent scream speechless.  All either of us could do was just run and hug and cry.  I will never forget the look on her face!  It was beautiful…thankful, shocked, and one that just said “only you would know what it means to have you here for this day”.  It was such a special moment for us.

I had known we would be going for over a month so I had to watch every. single. word. that I said to her.  (Y’all, I even mailed one of Lindsay’s birthday presents to really throw her off!)  We had just spoken minutes before the surprise for me to tell her that I was thinking about her and hoped all the party plans went great! HA! 

We spent the afternoon at her dad’s house eating pulled pork, yummy sides, a salad that was awesome and Suzie’s favorite from their time at U of M, and lots of delicious princess cake! 

The big boys played baseball non-stop…

(FYI…this picture has 2 heart transplant kiddos in it! You’d never know…they were playing just as hard and probably harder than the others!) 

…and the little ones snoozed through part of the party.

We also got to meet some amazing blogger friends…some that I have grown to love like family and some that have loved us from afar and finally introduced themselves to us!  I truly felt like we were surrounded by family the entire time we were there.

Luke was absolutely smitten with Elaine and gave her husband, Bill, the biggest smiles!  He had his surrogate grandparents picked out right away!

Lindsay thoroughly enjoyed her party!  Although, she didn’t seem to care for our singing all that much. :)  The musical cards were more her style!  Trust me, this girly girl knows that she deserves to be the center of attention…and she gets it! She is such a miracle!!!

The next morning we hung out at the Dean’s home for a little while and then headed to Gun Lake (Suzie’s aunt and uncle’s home…beautiful!!!!) for a day of fishing, boating, and grilling out!

Scott and JR fished to their heart’s content…and only stopped to eat and take a boat ride.  They could cast right off the dock and get fish after fish!  They loved it!

 

Isn’t he a doll in pink? ;0)  He wasn’t a big fan of the lifejacket…and eventually managed to fuss his way out of it!

This was Luke’s first boat ride so we got lots of pictures of him.  Other than the lifejacket issue, he seemed to love it!  He loves the breeze at the beach so the wind blowing on him was just as fun.

We rounded out our trip by hanging out at the Dean’s home again later that evening until the boys had wrestled each other silly and the babies were about to fall asleep eating.  Our biggest boys, Wyatt and Cole, have an amazing bond and have the best time together.  Both had a hard time saying goodbye…as was evident by Wyatt crying over breakfast when we were loading up the next morning to head to the airport and Suzie telling me that Cole had a really rough night himself.  Wyatt has already asked more than once if we can live at home for four days and then go to Michigan for four days and then back home for four and back to Michigan for four…you get the picture.  He loved it and had so much fun with his buddies!

There was truly nowhere else we would have rather been last weekend.  Having the opportunity to celebrate Lindsay’s 2nd birthday with her beautiful family was an absolute Godsend.  We know that our families were brought together by our sweetheart baby girls over two years ago for a reason…and every chance we get to spend together even further blesses the bond that we share.