Secret Mission

On July 1st, Frank turned 50. He was adamant about not wanting a party. I’m not sure if it was because he didn’t want a big fuss over his birthday or if he was all partied out with the non-stop family events. In any case, the whole not celebrating the 50th just didn’t fly with me & the kids so we planned a covert operation. Our plan was to have dinner out with the entire family without him knowing everyone would be there.

The mission seemed simple enough – we’d tell him we were going out to dinner with his sister; no problem pulling that off. The issue came with the later part of the plan – to have everyone come back here for coffee and cake. Thus started our mission. I sent Steve out for 2 cakes: an ice cream cake & a strawberry shortcake. When he got back, we needed to figure out how to get 2 cakes into the house. One cake wouldn’t be a problem but Frank would suspect something if he knew we had 2 cakes. You just don’t buy 2 cakes for 5 people.

Stephen came in with one of the cakes & distracted Frank while sending me out to the car to grab the other cake and hide it downstairs in the basement freezer. Frank suspected the whole distraction plot but thought it was related to a gift, not a second cake. Mission accomplished.

Next was the cleaning part. Normally my cleaning day is either Thursday or Friday. I don’t do the whole dusting, mopping thing on the weekends. I knew he wouldn’t think it too strange for me to want to clean up before his sister got there but I couldn’t go too nuts with cleaning. Luckily, cleaning isn’t exactly one of my favorite things so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

We tried to time things right so everyone else would be at the restaurant when we got there. My brother complicated that by getting lost. It is a mystery to me as to how that happened since the restaurant is only 6 blocks away from our house. Naturally I had to give him a hard time about that. When we were leaving to go back to my house, I said to him, “You know how to get to my house, right?”

Little did I know it wasn’t my brother I had to worry about. As we drove back to our house, I saw my sister’s car behind us. We turned onto our block but as I looked in the rear view mirror, I saw my brother in-law turn in the opposite direction. It’ll be a tough choice knowing which one to tease about directions next time the family gets together.