Surprise Trip To Ohio!!!

On December 7th, my family planned a surprise trip to Ohio to see Matthew and to meet his family!  Normally, we wouldn't have planned it to be such a surprise, but Matthew is always getting us and has been several up on us for quite a while, so we decided to get him with a good one!  We started planning it about a month ahead of time with Matthew's brother (Luke) and sister-in-law (Joan), and the closer it got, and the more people that knew what we were planning, the harder it became to keep the secret.  But keep it we did.

We left early Sunday morning on the 7th, and we were scheduled to arrive at Luke's house at 6:30 that night.  We were then going to either head over to Matthew's place to surprise him there, or Luke was going to somehow get him over to his place.  Well,...our plan almost didn't work like it was supposed to.  Luke texted us that morning while we were on the road, saying that Matthew was thinking about attending a church that was over an hour away and whose services didn't start until evening, and therefore, he wouldn't be home until around 9:00 or 10:00 at night!  Yikes!  After throwing around some ideas, Luke finally asked Matthew if he wanted to come over that evening to watch Andy Griffeth with him around 6:30, which Matthew ended up agreeing with, so he went to the local Baptist church in town.  Whew!  So our plan was set...

When 6:30 rolled around, we were a couple of minutes from Luke's house and he called to inform us that Matthew was not there yet.  We told him to just let us know when he arrived.  So we decided to stop in a local convenient store to wait.  And wait...and wait.  The minutes were slowly ticking by, and when we received a call from Luke at 6:45 saying he still wasn't there, and that he couldn't reach him on the phone, we decided to get back on the road and head in Luke's direction, ...slowly.  At 7:00 we were still driving around all of the back roads behind Luke's place, just killing time.  I tried texting Matthew, hoping that he would answer that and let us know what he was up to.  No reply.  I tried another text, letting him know that I was going to a friend's house that evening (hahaha!), and I probably wouldn't be able to text him that evening.  He finally replied back and told us that he had just gotten off the phone with a friend of his down in Florida after talking for the past 2 1/2 hours and he was heading over to Luke's to watch some Andy Griffeth.  I wished him a very nice evening (more chuckles), and he did the same for me.  

A few minutes pass and Luke texts us that he has arrived at his place.  At this point we were parked in a lot with our lights off, just waiting.  We gave him a few minutes to get settled in and then drove the 1/2 mile to Luke's.  We shut our lights off as we pulled into the drive and Luke saw us so he turned up some music so Matthew couldn't hear our diesel van pulling in.  We all piled out of the van and headed for the front door.  Dad knocked loudly and then we all broke out into "We Wish You A Merry Christmas!"....

It took a few minutes for them to reach the door, and when Luke finally opened it to reveal to Matthew who the Christmas carolers were, he was completely shocked!  He didn't even know what to do; he just stood there saying, "No way.  NO way!  I cannot believe you guys are in Ohio! No way! Luke!  You knew about this!"

As a side-note, about 17 people knew about our surprise visit and they all kept the secret from Matthew superbly!  It actually took about a day and a half for it to finally sink it that we were there, but we had a wonderful time.  Stay tuned for pictures from the trip...