Saturday, April 09, 2005

Surprise

For the past few months I've been planning a surprise. Over that time period, I realized, it's really tough to keep a big secret from a family member. It's especially difficult because it was my sister and I speak to her often. But now the secret is out. Phew.

My father and his wife arrived in Paris on Thursday morning. The first visitor to arrive this morning was my brother-in-law from Japan. He arrived at my door at 5:08am. A couple of hours later my sister and her daughter arrived from Connecticut. My oldest nephew arrived from Washington, D.C. and his brother arrived from North Carolina. It felt a bit like Grand Central Station, and I wasn't even around. I worried from afar.

Today was also the MESSAGE mother group bring and buy sale. My brother-in-law -- the first to arrive -- came with me to sell about 40 items that my children no longer needed. Did you ever notice how the smallest children have the biggest toys? It felt good to get some of these big items out of my apartment. I even got a chance to see a favorite commenter, Oz, again. I spent about 5 hours at the Bring and Buy, made a little money and got to hang with my brother-in-law. I also finally got to try a popular American caterer, Tracy. She made lunches for the sellers today.

We returned home to find my sister, her husband and daughter. The rest of a group was staying at a hotel and were coming over for dinner. There were worries -- would my little one blab, did she hear my son talking about the hotel, did my husband clean up well enough from my father being at our apartment. So, how fun it was to see her surprise, that her whole family came over to celebrate her milestone birthday. A week of fun is planned.

-- said Auntie M in Paris
9:42 PM

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