Mrs. EMS Artifact and I are Deep in the Heart of Dixie visiting my son, daughter in law, and of course the grand kids. The Mrs. celebrated her birthday on the 26th Said celebration was spent mostly traveling by air and car to our destination.

What the Mrs. didn’t know was that our daughter and I had hatched a secret plan to surprise her for her birthday. Our daughter and her boyfriend live in Texas and we haven’t seen them in six months. Mrs. EMS Artifact’s birthday is one of the “big ones” that people celebrate in some form or another. Except that she’s not feeling the joy of hitting this particular age. In fact, she’s been kind of dreading it for six months.

Oh, and she hates surprise parties. Even more than I do.

So, the plan was for daughter and boyfriend to fly into the nearest airport, my son to pick them up and bring them to his house. There, they’d walk in and my son would say, “I brought your birthday presents.”

Tickets were bought, cover stories were concocted, Facebook posts were planted to give the illusion of normalcy and hide the movement of the visitors. My daughter even called on the Mrs.’s  birthday and said how much she missed her and how said she was that they wouldn’t be together.

We had dinner at my son’s house and then he and daughter in law asked if we’d mind watching the kids while they went to the gym. No problem, we can handle that.

Two hours later all four of the kids walked in and our lovely daughter in law said, “We brought you presents.”

Mrs. EMS Artifact looked up and saw all four of our “kids” and for a second was confused. Then she figured it out and looked at me. “Did you know about this?”

“Know about it, daughter and I planned it.. We were worried that you might figure it out.”

She didn’t figure it out, surprise was complete, joy was even more complete, if that’s possible.

I am now officially crowned, “Best. Husband. Ever.”

As if there was ever any doubt.

Mrs. EMS Artifact even forgave me for two months of deception.

Now, back to spoiling grand kids.