Surprise!

In the spring of 1979 Shrerry was finishing up a semester at the Y and we decided to take a trip from Cleveland to Provo to pick her up. It seemed like if I told the kids ahead about anything relly fun that they would get out of control with excitement! Trying to get ready for a trip with five little kids who were impossible to control seemed like a nightmare to me. I told Larry that I wasn’t going to tell them that we were going, so we planned our little surprise.
I began preparations in secret…kids are pretty clueless if you can keep a low profile. Somehow was able to get a lot of things done without them getting wind of an eminent trip. The night before we were going to leave we said to them,” How would you guys like to sleep in the Van tonight…You can have a sleepover and pretend you are camping?” Of course they loved the idea. I said, “You can even sleep in your clothes if you want to.” They always loved that.
So we got them all bedded down in the back of the Van. There was Mark, Mike,Vic and David and Christine. James was only one and so he stayed in the house. After they were all asleep we packed the car around them. We put each child’s clothes in a pillow case and stuffed them under the seats.
At the crack of dawn Larry and I got in the car and started driving. It was several hours later that the kids woke up. One by one their sleepy heads poked up over the back seat. We were met with big smiles, and lots of questions. They loved the surprise of going on a trip clear to Utah. They loved stopping in a rest stop for breakfast. It was probably the easiest trip we had taken, and we had taken a lot of trips. What started out to be a break for me turned out to be the best surprise ever for them.