Back in August Emily mentioned that Mom was turning 70 in February and that we should do something awesome like all of us come together and surprise her. The seed was planted and over the next six months tons of emails were sent out and read and plans were made and flights were booked. On February 5th Joshua, Emily, Andrew and I flew to California and were picked up at the airport by Erin. We stayed the night at her place and the next morning we got up and got ready to go surprise my Mom. My bangs were wonky and so after I messed around with them and tried to fix them I took a picture to make sure they looked ok.
Heather and mom were going to Pilates that morning and she told Mom that they were going to meet Ashleigh at Brandon's Diner afterwards for a birthday breakfast. Mom later said she thought it was weird they were going the day before her Birthday but went along with their plans. Ashleigh also made plans with her to go to Disneyland for the day.
the four of us with Erin met Stephanie, Jeremy and Ashleigh at the Diner and went in and got seated. We were all so excited and when we saw Mom and Heather pull up we got super giddy and had big grins on our faces. They walked in and Heather mentioned to Mom that she saw Ashleigh and Mom looked and spotted Ashleigh and then slowly saw the rest of us. Her jaw dropped and she looked stunned. It was the best reaction ever! We all said Happy Birthday and then stood to give the birthday girl hugs. All of us had tears in our eyes, it was so much fun to be together as siblings to surprise our Mom.
After we were done eating and talking I had the waiter take a group picture of all of us.
After we left the diner we headed over to Moms house where we just sat and visited and talked and laughed all afternoon. Mom made the brilliant suggestion to go to the mall so we could go to See's and she could buy us all some chocolate for valentines day, then she wouldn't have to worry about mailing them. So off we went.
After we picked our candy I had the See's lady take our picture. She managed to cut Heather out of the picture so I took a selfie with her so she could be part of the picture fun.
Andrew found an "interesting" jacket to try on.
After the mall we headed to Mom's next surprise, dinner at "Farrell's". Farrell's is famous for it's ice-cream sundaes and it was the perfect place to take the birthday girl. We had a good time, the food was delicious, the company was awesome but the atmosphere was a little much. It was just a very loud place. It is a favorite place to go to for birthdays and there was a lot of singing going on. We decided it was a place to go to with a lot of time in between.
The menus were printed like newspapers and that made for a fun picture,
