Surprise! The Nelsons are Going Southwest!

Chris and I have our 20th wedding anniversary coming up next month. Twenty years is a pretty special thing, so we want to do something very special to celebrate it! About a year ago, we started discussing different things that we might want to do and settled on taking a big driving trip to the Grand Canyon with the kids. Well, the Grand Canyon grew into visiting national parks in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, as well as a few sites in New Mexico.

We made lodging reservations for this trip last February, but hadn't told the kids anything about it. Surprises are fun, and we wanted this to be a surprise! 

When we told them about Disney last year (you can read about it here), we didn't wait as long as we wanted to before letting them in on the surprise. The same thing happened this time! I love to anticipate and talk about upcoming trips with them, so I didn't want to hold out on them too long. This morning - with a loose plan in place - Chris and I decided to tell them about our surprise!

I had found a mock ticket to the Grand Canyon online and had printed one for each child. We put those in envelopes, turned scenes of the Grand Canyon on the TV, put travel brochures and special travel notebooks we made for them in a basket, and called them all upstairs. We had the basket covered with a blanket, and no one noticed the TV scrolling photos of the Grand Canyon. We started by giving everyone their envelopes. 

Brianna was the first to get hers open and read the ticket. 

Bri and Bren were so excited while Brooke and Brecklyn were still trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, they all started to get excited!!!

They were definitely happy about the news, and they didn't even know the half of it yet!

There was a little confusion about the tickets . . . they thought the tickets meant we were flying to see the Grand Canyon. We had to explain that this was a driving vacation, and while we were explaining that we also told them about the other parks and special places we plan to visit. 

Then, we had them uncover the basket that held maps, brochures, and their custom notebooks for the trip. They wasted no time opening their notebooks so they could see the full itinerary. 

Along with a day-by-day itinerary (that you can see in the photos above), we included information sheets about each state and each park we plan to visit. We also included worksheets, wordsearches, and a license plate game in each notebook. They were a lot of work to put together, but we both loved seeing how excited the kids were about them!

After surprising the kids with the news of the trip, we went out to El Azteca for lunch. Of course, we spent the entire lunch answering questions and discussing all things trip related. We have dubbed this trip "The Nelsons Go Southwest, 2021", and it's safe to say we are all very excited about it!

A little later that afternoon, Bri and I went on a rare one-on-one outing to get pedicures. I was able to share a few more details with her about the trip that the younger kids aren't as interested in. Her getting older is certainly bittersweet, but I definitely enjoy our time together!

When we were in the throws of infertility, I used to dream about the day we would have a van full of children to take on trips. Sometimes, it almost seems unreal that my dream is a reality. I mean, not only do we have that van full of kids, but we are blessed enough to be able to take them on amazing trips. Grateful doesn't even begin to describe it!