Giving my son the surprise of his life

As soon as we got off one theme park ride, we ran to the next and the next. Fifteen years ago, we went to Walt Disney World. Our kids had been asking and my wife and I had been working hard at work. We needed the break.

We saved up the money and set a date. Of course, as anyone who has ever been to to Disney knows, two things happened. We spent more than we had planned and we were on our feet the entire time. I write about the trip in my blog, Keeping joy simple, on The Heart of the Matter.

All these years later, I like to give my youngest son a hard time because he says he doesn’t remember the trip.

The little ingrate.

I can’t give him too much of a hard time though. He was pretty young. A few years later, though, we got back at him. When he was 8, we decided to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. We didn’t tell him that we were going to go. We decided to make the trip by car and instead told him that we we were visiting Duke University and a few other colleges for our daughter, a high school senior.

We played up each college as we passed them on the highway. Good thing his geography is a bit iffy, he never realized that we had long left the state of North Carolina, passed through South Carolina and Georgia and into Florida.

Of course, was he ever in for a surprise? He never knew what it hit him. It’s still one of the biggest surprises in our house.

Yes, joy for me really is anytime I get to spend time with my wife and kids. What’s joy for you?

Related Story:

Keeping joy simple

on The Heart of the Matter.

Images by Pixabay.

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27 thoughts on “Giving my son the surprise of his life”

    1. Ha, ha, the more the merrier Ab! However, countless hours stuck in the car, you might think otherwise! It was a blast. It was fun surprising him. We were essentially at Universal when we told him. He was stuck in his book and games the whole time, never noticed. We almost blew it a couple of times. His brother and sister loved being a part of the surprise. They were a big help.

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    1. It was a long trip. It was a lot of fun though. We didn’t tell him until we were a few minutes out from Universal. We stopped and gave the go-ahead to his brother and sister to tell him. He really thought we were driving to Duke. When our daughter started applying to schools, I told her she should apply to Duke for just the heck of it. She didn’t, but we’ll always have the school in our hearts. Ha, ha.

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  5. Love all of this! And your silly comment…’the little ingrate’ tickled me! Our daughter has ZERO recollection of her first visit to Disney. We thought we were awesome parents…but at five, it was just too much too soon. I think she was massively overstimulated and somehow none of the experience “stuck”. 🤣

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    1. Thank you for getting my sarcasm. I worry sometimes that folks will take me too literal. How dare him not remember. Ha, ha. He doesn’t remember any of the Disney trips, swears we never went. Now, the universal one he remembers. I made sure to make a point out of everything. Ha, ha.

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      2. Yea, well, between you and me, he’s still a li’l ingrate! If he really appreciated that trip to Universal, he would not be packing his bags right now and instead would be staying home closer to go to college. How dare him? I’m a fun guy. C’mon! Ha, ha.

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    1. Yes, yes, why do they do that to us!!!! Little brats. Ha, ha, I’m just kidding. It’s like the one Christmas when our daughter was one or two and she played with the empty boxes Christmas morning instead of the Christmas toys under the tree. 😎😎😎

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  8. “I can’t give him too much of a hard time though. He was pretty young.” I busted up laughing at these, envisioning my mom when she’d give me this look like she was contemplating lecturing me … and would instead sigh and say, “You’ll have kids someday, then you’ll get it.” I don’t know why that memory and this post are tickling me so much right now, but they are. 🙂

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  9. So glad your surprise worked out in a fun and memorable way Brian! We did this with a major trip to Hawaii thinking what an adventure we would have by starting out telling the kids we were going to “the beach” which for us was a 2 hour drive away. Puzzled looks from the two oldest when we arrived at dad’s AF base to catch a hop over the Pacific to a much different beach. Sadly however- we all ended up being really ill the entire time we were there 😦

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  10. What a great surprise, Brian, and I find joy in the same…spending time with hubby and our daughter and son. They’re 31 and 28, so it’s nice to have that adult conversation. And I’m thankful that we have a great relationship.

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  11. From Disney I remember the long lines, the heat, the humidity, but it was a lot of fun! Joy for me these days… Kids grown, husband dead. A cold I.P.A. when it gets to 100 F here in California’s Central Valley gets close.

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