Grandma's 80th

This past weekend was my Grandma's 80th birthday so my mom, sister and I decided to drive to where she lives (roughly 3 1/2 hours away) and surprise her.  When we got to her house, we put on hats and prepared our noisemakers and sneaked into her house.  We found her sleeping in a chair, so the three of us surrounded her and started blowing our noisemakers and shouting Happy Birthday.  She woke up, look a little confused, and asked what we were doing.  When we told her that we were there for her birthday, she told us that her birthday wasn't until the following day (Saturday).  My mom just kind of looked at her and said that we knew, but wanted to be here for the entire day so we came early.

While my grandma was sleeping, my sister and I (mostly me because she came into the room late) blew up 80 balloons and tried to stash them in the closet of the room where my mom and I were sleeping and behind one of the beds.  Our plan was to put out the 80 balloons, the 80 cards that my mom's students and mine made the week before, the banner, and the birthday balloon while she took her morning bath.

Normally she gets up, we all eat breakfast, and then she will take the bath.  Much to our chagrin, my mom and I woke up around 7am so the sound of the tub running.  We looked at each other and, in the fastest, quietest way possible, grabbed the balloons from their hiding place and brought them to the kitchen, grabbed the cards and put them all over her kitchen table, and hung the banner...in what I'm sure was record time.

We were in the living room getting ready to sneak back to bed, everything finally in place, when we heard the bathroom door open.  We decided to just wait and see her reaction and I, being the kind granddaughter that I am, decided to have my camera ready to capture her reaction.

Yep.  Grandma has some pretty awesome pajamas.  I like the mixed look of surprise and slight annoyance on her face.

Her response upon seeing the floor covered in balloons was, "How is this going to work?"  Leave it to Grandma to be worried about how she was going to prepare breakfast for us and see the balloons as an inconvenience.  It took us about 40 minutes to blow them up and less than 5 minutes to deflate all of them.

Grandma loved all of our cards and read each and every one, commenting on how beautiful they were.

As we were getting ready to leave on Sunday, she commented that she had never had a birthday quite like this one.  Mission accomplished.