Surprise Texas Trip

My sister and I had planned since Dec. to go to Texas for my mom's birthday since neither of us and our families were able to make it for Christmas. Then once the time came for seriously planning and setting dates and organizing both of us going we decided to surprise my mom for her birthday. The only person we told was my dad, because we needed someone to pick up my sister and her son from the airport and we wanted to be apart of birthday celebrations he had planned. None of our other siblings knew we were coming until just a few days before we got there so that they didn't make any plans because my moms birthday fell just a couple of days before Easter and some might plan to go out of town to see other family. The surprise was perfect. I wasn't there to see my moms reaction to when my sister and her son got there but I can only imagine it was something similar to the reaction she got once she saw my little family. Which my sister in law has those pictures. As soon as we pulled into town we went straight to my brothers house where we bathed the kids and got them ready for the day (apparently Autumn gets car sick after awhile and threw up twice when we were only a few hours away). When my mom and my sisters got to my brothers house we had Autumn open the door, and as soon as she opened the door Autumn said, "Hi Grandma!" I heard my mom gasp and Drew and I stepped out from behind the wall and told her happy birthday. She kept saying, "What are you doing here?" and "How did you get here?" She was truely surprised and never saw it coming. She had all 5 of her kids and all her grandkids together for her birthday. It was a lot of fun to spend her birthday with everyone and to do all the Easter festivities too. It's only my sister and I in AZ and all the rest of our family is in TX. So it was a lot of fun for everyone! Here are some pictures to highlight our trip.

Lots of fun and playing with Grandpa.

Painting Easter eggs. My sister in law found these awesome egg painting sticks at walmart, they look like Q-Tips and you break the top off and all the paint goes down into the other end and kids are able to paint and draw on the egg with them. Perfect for little kids.

The bigger kids painted eggs the more traditional way. :)

Here are the kids baskets and Easter outfits. I wasn't awake when the kids got up and went through their baskets so there is no pictures of the sheer joy they had.

We also went to the Dallas Zoo- my nieces preschool class was going and we got there late, which worked out great because some of the parents and kids who paid didn't show up so we all got to go in free, even though there was 5 extra people. This will get its own post later.

Autumn and her new BFF. She would ask to play with her whenever we weren't with her. She really loves her cousins.

We enjoyed lots of playing and all of Grandma's toys. Especially the shopping cart which Weston would climb into and sit in until someone pushed him around.

We went out to eat a lot. Here is Autumn  and my dad and sister when we met my dad for lunch at Pappadeaux's.

I don't have my moms pictures or my sister in laws yet. Otherwise I could post a ton more about what we did. That can be a later post. We had so much fun. I never thought that so many people could pull off a surprise like this, there were so many times when people almost let it slip and I know it had to be hard. It was hard enough for me. :)