Surprise, surprise!!

Yesterday when I got the mail, I flipped through it, pulled out the bills, and set aside the rest in a soon-to-be-thrown-away pile. (I can never quite bring myself to put the junk directly into the trash can.)

A few hours later Stas asked what had come in the mail that day. Logically my reply was “bills & junk.” After a little encouraging, Stas convinced me to go through and open up all of the junk.

This brings us to one particular item of “junk” mail. Now why did I question the legitimacy of this particular item? Well let me explain:
-The return address was from Omaha, Nebraska
-The name on the return address was simply “Sweepstakes”
-The envelope was stamped and not metered like most junk mail.
-My name was spelled wrong. And not even my married name, my maiden name. It was addressed to “Julie Best”. I mean seriously, it’s only four-letters long. If they can’t even get that right, then I really don’t care what the Sweepstakes has for me.

As I examined the contents, I became increasingly curious. The envelope held a single sheet of white paper with plain black text. Hmm, that’s odd. Normally junk mail has tons of enclosures and excessive colorful ink. The sheet was a flight itinerary, odd. As I reviewed the text on the page, these are the things that stuck out to me:
-Both Stas’s full name and my name were spelled correctly (in contrast to what was on the envelope).
-The airports selected were Philly and DFW; totally where we would want to fly to/from.
-The dates of the flights were exactly when we might be able to travel aka when I have off of work.
At this point I was thinking that these “Sweepstakes” people have some really good marketing research software. Software which is so good it kind of freaks me out. A lot.

And then the light bulb turned on – this was for real! Surprise! Stas, the most bomb-dot-com husband of them all, had booked the tickets a few weeks earlier and had been keeping it a secret from me. He even had my family in on the deal! The “Sweepstakes” letter was his fun way of letting me know. He is so creative. He made up the return address and misspelled my name just to mess with me. That’s my man! He had wanted to wait until the very last minute to tell me about it, but using his better judgment he decided to give me a two week heads up. Thanks babe, my obsessive-compulsive need to plan everything thanks you for the two week notice. And I say THANK YOU for being so thoughtful. And of course I love you.

I am so thrilled to be going to Texas. I haven’t been “home” since Christmas 2007; that’ll be sixteen months I've been away!!! Needless to say, I am excited to see mis padres, my sister & her family (including my new niece!), hopefully D & his family, to share with Stas the Omni experience, to eat at Costa Vida, Uncle Julio’s, & Sonic, to escape the eternal butt-freeze of PA, and to maybe see some more of our favorite people! I just can’t wait!!

Isn’t my husband the bomb-dot-com?