CHRISTMAS EVE SURPRISE

For Christmas this year, Jerm's side of the family made an agreement to forego giving gifts to each other and instead channel all of our money into one gift for his grandmother. After a little deliberation, we decided that we were going to buy her a TV, since the one she had previously owned died. (It was easily over 20 years old…)

We met for lunch at a local restaurant on Christmas Eve with a plan to go back to Grandma’s afterward. We fabricated a bogus story so that Jeremy and his cousin could leave the lunch a few minutes early to set up the TV.

But we did not have much time.

When we arrived at Grandma's place, we immediately encountered a minor problem -- the TV was too big for her entertainment center!

Fortunately, we found a screw driver and were able to remove the obstructing parts. We texted Jeremy's Aunt Linda to ask her to stall so that we would have more time.



But she replied to tell us that they were almost back. Well, crap!

I opened the box while the boys were hard at work, and we managed to get the TV set up just in the nick of time.



We decided that we were going to hide in one of Grandma's bedrooms, but we wanted to wait to hide until we knew they had arrived.

And so we waited.



And waited.



And waited. Where the heck were they?!?

Apparently, in an effort to stall, Jerm's aunt took a detour to Sonic to order a cup of ice. At this point, Grandma got a little irritated and asked, "What's wrong with the ice at my house?" Linda gave an ambiguous, nonspecific answer, which was returned with this hilarious little Grandma-ism: "Well, a lady's gotta poop sometime!"

They finally arrived, I switched the camera to video record mode, and this is the sequence of events thereafter.

As you can see, we made two very rookie mistakes by turning the lights off (she had left them on for Abby....her cat) and leaving the boards from the entertainment in plain sight. We were too excited and in a hurry to even think of those things, and Grandma is apparently too spry and perceptive to let anything get past her. I was laughing so much in the bedroom that she caught us. I truly lost it when she discovered the boards we left out!

The best part, however, was her genuine reaction to the surprise gift.





We love you, Grandma!