So the weekend before (aug 23-ish) my sister called and said that she and my sis-in-law Cyndi had come up with a FANTASTIC plan...do you want to come to Cali for the long labor day weekend. Ummm hello, are you kidding - a spontaneous trip to sunny So. Cal.!?! My brother (Ron's) b-day was the 23rd - and my mom was so sad eyes that she wasn't there for his day plus my nephew (Mathew) his b-day was coming up on the 31st so just in general we were just sad we couldn't be there to join the festivities and just be with each other etc. So, once again my wonderful fam came through!! They discovered that my brother had these sky miles on his Delta account that HAD to be used before September. He had enough sky miles for two round trip tickets and was just under for a third so my wonderful sisters were going to purchase a ticket for the D-ster (sorry Mario, he sorta got left out of the fun ;(). Well at the last minute my sister realized that she had enough sky miles to transfer to my bro's account so that the D-ster's ticket ended up being "free" too (right, nothing is really free but Tina/Ron are working that part out!) Anyway, so the idea was to fly out on Friday the 29th early afternoon and return on Monday the 1st and best part was...it was a SURPRISE!! Ummm, hello They didn't tell my brother that we were coming, it was going to be a be-lated b-day surprise!! Everything was perfect, no time taken off work, not too expensive, Cyndi had to punish my brother so he was grounded for the weekend :) (my brother is a producer for FOX News Channel and was "grounded" because he was working on a special project and he was not allowed to leave his home state for ANY reason or for ANY news that may or may not happen), it was PERFECT. And then...
GUSTAV!
First let me just say that can you even imagine living in New Orleans?? I mean they are still trying to recover from Katrina and they get told that yet another Hurricane is heading your way and supposed to be "bigger" than Katrina and ooops, the levee's are supposed to be "finished" by 2011 - um, right...I am pretty sure I would move for good!!
So, my brother was suddenly reprieved. Go figure. Basically the Anchor person that was going to cover the story said - in so many words - that the only Producer he was taking with him to do this story was my brother. Now, as awesome as that is/was that of ALL of the producers within FOX, my brother was the one requested and how honored that we are that he is such an amazing person and has the reputation that he does, freakin' rocks and we are so proud of him! Mmmmm hmmmmm - DAMN IT!! The freakin' surprise was ruined!! When my brother called his sweet wife to tell her he was un-grounded and headin' south, what a great opportunity this was going to be for him (career wise) etc. she frantically began to think of anything and everything to keep him from going. After a lengthy "discussion" with Ron and trying to come up with any excuse in the book - she finally had to "let the cat out of the bag". Needless to say my brother was sick with mixed emotions. Of course he knew that he had to go and of course he didn't want to go. My mother getting on a plane for him - that was HUGE and worth missing walking the red carpet with Tim McGraw (oh wait we're talking bout my bro) anyway, it was very tormenting for him. My sisters forebade him to call us to forwarn that he would be leaving town after-all so he tried to call Delta to get our tickets moved to a different day but to no avail. The only thing he was able to do was instead of leaving bright and early Saturday morning - he took the "red eye" out Saturday night so we were able to spend Friday afternoon/evening and all day Saturday with him. My sister had to break the news to us when we landed in Cali and it was a bit anti-climatic...but we still had lots of people to visit and we were very excited to be there. We hadn't seen Tina, Cyndi and the kids in a long time and to be part of Mathew's b-day was great (Dominic was very excited about that part) and after we got over the mixed emotions from the idea of Ron heading into the storm while all of LA was gettin' the hell out o' dodge and trying not to think of the dangers of that, we were able to have some quality time with him and it was really a GREAT trip!! As usual my family rocks and we did as much as we could with the time we had available. So, so fun to be able to just shoot off spur-of-the-moment, hang out, chill, chat, meet some new people, try some new restaurants (not so good ones but none-the-less) just do something that we never have opportunity to do and we enjoyed every minute of it (except for the few short minutes we spent in the air sorry mom!). Stay tuned for the pics from this trip - they aren't quite organized yet. TTFN!
2 comments:
Okay, so I may not have been around much when we were younger, but I could swear that you only have one brother. SO, how is it that he can use his skymiles for your tickets without knowing you are coming to Cali??????????????? Did I miss something?
Sounds like fun, hope you had a good time!!!!
Darci
LOL! Because Cyndi is sneaky!! She has access to his acct. (as all wives should) so she was able to "act on his behalf" without him knowing. We were a little nervous though because we completely emptied his sky miles and he may be a little sad about that - but he had no idea that these miles existed and he has a whole bucket more somewhere else. So all is good! :)
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