Returning Home: Christmas Wrap Up

 There is nothing more that Doug & I like than to give a good Christmas surprise!  We knew for a couple months that we were planning to return home for Christmas, but we wanted to surprise the kids and grandkids so we told NO ONE!  We wouldn't even let our Travel Secretary input our return flight in the computer, because we waited until 2 days before we came home to call our Stake President and tell him that we were returning.  

A week before we were to return, Blake called to ask if he & Alexa could go to our cabin in Idaho for Christmas.  We hesitated because we had our whole scheme worked out that included him as our second stop on Christmas morning to surprise him on his doorstep.  He noted our hesitancy and said, "It's ok if you tell me no!" to which Doug replied, "I want to say no, but not for the reasons you may think."  At that point to not risk hard feelings, we explained our little surprise and swore him to secrecy.  He completely understood, but we then let him know that he was free to go to the cabin with his own plans.  Luckily for us, he is a quick thinker and offered to pick us up at the airport, instead of us renting a car as we had intended.  On December 25th at 12:35 am, we were met at Salt Lake City Airport by Blake, Alexa & Ender.  Unfortunately, we were all so tired and it was extremely late that we didn't think to get pictures.  We had a nice visit on the way home and they stayed until about 2 am chatting with us.  We all fell into bed, setting the alarm for our 7 am surprise visit to Samantha's house where Sydney and Adam, Cami & Hudson were celebrating Christmas together.  

On Christmas morning with sleepy eyes and excited hearts, we drove ourselves down to Santaquin to surprise Sydney & Sam's family.  Sam had been a little sneaky and had pressured my sister into finding out that we were not on a flight January 3rd out of Barbados.  She was good enough not to share that info with anyone, however.  We knocked on their door with GREAT surprise from the kiddos!

Not all things go as planned, so we learned that instead of a Christmas in Lehi for the Peck Family that Mac had booked a trip to San Diego for Ash & Sophie to spend Christmas and have a little adventure there.  Not to ruin their plans, Doug booked us a plane ticket for the day to San Diego on December 26th so we could surprise them!  We swore the other kids to secrecy and asked them not to post anything on social media of their Christmas day until after we surprised Ash!

We landed in San Diego about 9:30 am.  Sam had Ashlyn's location tracked by phone, so we knew that they were on their way to San Diego Zoo.  Upon landing, we rented a car for the day, mapped the Zoo into the GPS, and headed out.  Luckily for us, the Zoo is within 10 miles of the airport so it wasn't hard to find.  Once we were parked, bought tickets, and entered the park, Samantha picked us both up on the Find my People App and navigated us like a Jason Bourne movie to their exact location.

As the little family were peering over into an animal cage standing side by side, Doug walked up behind Sophie and said, "M'am, could you please have your daughter move over so I can get a better view?"  To which Ashlyn turns to face Doug with full Mama Bear look and about to spew a comment, when the look of sheer disbelief and shock over take her and she squeals, screams, and begins to cry, "What? Why? How?"  At which time, Sophie jumps in her daddy's arms and has no clue what is happening to her mom.  It took Sophie an hour to warm up to us.  We spent a glorious afternoon walking around the Zoo spending time catching up with Ash's little family.  It was priceless.  

On the 28th of December, we went back to the cabin for the first time in 19 months.  Blake & Alexa had opened it up and cleaned a lot of the dust up.  Samantha's family joined us shortly for New Years.  Adam wanted to go to the cabin so bad that he came and spent the weekend before with us and drove up with us.  He was a little angel.  He really likes the cabin.  

On January 12th, we had our homecoming.  The only picture I took from that day was one with some of our young missionaries who came.  It was awesome  

L-R:  Elders Van Wagonner, Roberts, Motley, Parker, us, Sister Bodily
Front: Elders Broberg & Walsh