SURPRISE...I'M IN WISCONSIN!

In a unexpected turn of events, Leandra and I drove to Wisconsin on Wednesday evening. I never mentioned it because I decided to surprise my mom. The story goes back to October, but this is how it went down:

Leandra works at a music store in Evansville and she had been given a memo saying that she would not be able to request time off until February. Because of that, and a number of other factors, we had accepted that fact that we would not be going to Wisconsin for Christmas. We actually bought a webcam for my family in October so that we could talk to each other using Skype.

The week before Christmas, Leandra got her work schedule and she had Christmas Eve off and wasn't scheduled to work until 1:00 pm on Saturday. So I brought up the idea of making the trip.

I thought it would be fun to surprise the family, particularly my mom. On Christmas Eve, my step-dad's family gets together and, for as long as I can remember, someone has ALWAYS dressed up as Santa for the little kids. I have been the recent designate for the job...mostly because the little kids don't recognize my voice because I'm not around as much. It's also kind of fun.

I needed someone on the inside to help me out...so I called my sister. I also had to call my uncle who owned the Santa suit. My sister got my step-dad in on the job or we might have had some problems logistically gettng dressed and not getting spotted.

There was one wild-card to the scenario and that was the weather, which I kept an eye on up until the point that we were leaving. If ice was in the forecast, I probably was going to abort the trip. Luckily, the weather was OK for the majority of the trip. We left after Leandra got off of work at 8:30 pm and got in around 4:00 am...ugh.

We slept in on Christmas Eve (sort of) and visited Leandra's family in Elkhorn before we drove to East Troy for the surprise. We snuck into the garage where my sister and uncle were waiting with the Santa suit. I quickly got dressed, slapped on the wig and beard (which ended up being a whole separate issue/story during the Santa visit), grabbed my bag of gifts and headed into the house.

I headed to the basement/family room where everyone was waiting. I wasn't really looking at faces as I was walking down the steps, but there was a lot of surprised laughing so I think it worked. After I got through the kids, I called up my mom to sit on Santa's lap.

Mission complete. Merry Christmas!


Standing (L-R): Andy (brother), Kim (sister), Leandra (my wife), Dan (me)
Sitting (L-R): Dave (step-dad), Kristen (sister), Mary (mom)