Italy Part 2: The Reveal

Writer's note: This is one of a series of posts about my fabulous trip to Italy. Please scroll down or click on Archives to the right to make sure you read them in order.

It was very important to me that my mom not know about the trip until the morning of the day we were leaving. Our plane was due to leave around 2 PM, so I told her I was picking her up for Branson around 7:30 AM. She whined a great deal about having to be ready so early for her vacation, but I knew she'd appreciate the packing time. I went to her house and walked in with the video camera rolling. I said I was doing a video diary of our Branson trip for this blog, and she never questioned it. I set the camera down, still recording, and handed her a present--told her it was from dad and I had wrapped it. It was a guidebook to Venice. Then dad handed her her passport and spending money all wrapped up. She started crying and hugged dad, thinking it meant he was taking her this summer.

Finally, I said, "Mom, we're not going to Branson today." "We're not?" she asked, thoroughly confused. I yelled, "No! We're going to Italy TODAY! TODAY, we're going to Italy!!!" She just said, "WHAT?" over and over for 10 minutes. I am going to try to navigate YouTube to get the video online so I can post it later--it is priceless. Soon, the doorbell rang, and it was Kristen. My mom saw her and cried out "I'm going to Italy!" and Kristen just smiled and said, "Can I come?" She and mom grabbed each other and just screamed and jumped up and down.

It took mom an hour, literally, to calm down enough to think about packing. She had just enough time to get everything together, and then we were off to the airport! Here's a picture of us right before we took off: