The Best Way to Lie to Your Kids

For some time now, I have subscribed to an aphorism that 'surprised people behave badly', but there are exceptions, such as early this morning, when the girls came to the airport with us having absolutely no clue that we were going to Disneyland.

It has been a real struggle concealing our plans from Fenya and Glory since late August when we booked the trip. We had agreed early on to shoot for an airport reveal, which a month ago seemed really easy. The only sticking points in September were the delays in getting our passports renewed, but the girls never twigged to our anxiety, so that eventually turned out all right.

The change in weather cooperated as well, as the summer clothes rotated out of the girls' closets and into the basement, but instead of returning to their Rubbermaid box to wait out the winter, Audrey surreptitiously packed them into our luggage.

This week was the hardest yet, and we made sure to talk about the (spurious) things we had planned for the weekend and afterwards. There was talk of stowing the bikes for the winter so both cars could be put back in the garage, and possibly watching Fellowship of the Ring, so we could have all three Lord of the Rings films under our belts before The Hobbit opens in December. As far as the girls were aware, we were spending Friday night at Auntie Tara's in Leduc, so that we could give her a ride to the airport in the morning. She was even going to borrow our luggage, so there was a reason to bring it all along.

Friday night we watched Grease (because Auntie is taking them to a singalong version shortly and none of us had ever seen it), ate some deep dish pizza, and said goodbye to Nanny, as she is heading back to B.C. on Sunday. After the girls went to sleep, we re-arranged the luggage appropriately so it would be easily loaded in the morning.

Not surprisingly, Audrey and I found it difficult to sleep, and ended up waking around 5:00, but this gave us enough time to check and recheck everything we needed, as well as leisurely washroom access for our ablutions.

We woke the girls about as late as we could, since the more awake they were, the more likely they were to twig to the fact that something was awry. Besides, maintaining the cover story was difficult for us that early. In fact, Audrey almost blew it on the incredibly short drive from Leduc to the airport, when she mentioned leaving our keys with Tara!

Thankfully, both girls were still somewhat non compos mentos, so we were able to to clue them in as planned, at the curb by departures, immediately after unloading 'Tara's' luggage. Unfortunately, I passed the iPad to Tara upside down, so her fingers got in the way of the camera a bit, but you can hear us talking, and most importantly, see Fenya's and Glory's faces when the realization hits them that they are, actually, leaving for Disneyland right now.

Most of our trips involve visits and tourism in varying measures, but this is our first non-camping vacation together, really, and also our first encounter with the new terminal at Edmonton international, which is actually very nice and very well set up. Well, maybe a bit manipulative to have you walk through the duty-free on your way to the gates; I'm not made of stone, y'know.

The mother of one of Glory's friends worked on the giant mosaic they have there, and we spent quite a bit of time admiring the details within.

If you have occasion to visit, have fun finding the Spider-Man head one of the security officers mentioned as she passed by.

We grabbed eggs Benny at Chili's and boarded without delay or incident, and once seated, I had to beg the question: are you excited to be going to Disneyland?

Truly, more than ten thousand words.