Well what can be said, it’s not often that Miss Laurie is caught off guard, in fact the last time it was a surprise fiftieth birthday gathering that I was able to mastermind under her nose. So it was very cool that we both got shocked by a pair of totally unexpected visitors.

I met Teresa many years ago at her work in Naiagra Falls where I purchased a few products to fill orders on some of my customers want lists and I then introduced her to Laurie who sells Scentsy products and Teresa just happened to be a Scentsy Addict, and the relationship grew from there, it wasn’t until sometime later that Anito and I met. Teresa is a great cook and was always baking cookies or goodies so every time Laurie and Teresa got together I knew there would be some goodies for me. Laurie would have an open house to show off the latest Scentsy products and Teresa would always drop by.

Anito is the head of maintenance at a hotel on Lundy’s Lane which is one of the main tourist areas in Niagara Falls, so we always had mechanical issues and a list of repair nightmares and unusual problems in common to discuss. In fact when discussing work issues many of Anito’s stories made mine seen quite trivial in comparison, the things that people do has never failed to amaze me and the things they do in their hotel rooms goes to a whole new level of bizarre.

So Teresa and Anito had rented a cottage in Grand Bend for a week and just thought they would stop by to surprise us, it was a Sunday and Laurie and Miss Bonnie were inspecting the progress of the gardens at the guest house and I was sitting by the coach with my laptop, most likely working on a blog post. And there are lots of cars moving around as the weekend warriors are heading out after the weekend so I never noticed when a car pulled in behind the coach. It wasn’t until I looked up as they were a few feet away that I was scrambling to place the faces, we have met about two hundred new families this year and we are doing pretty good at placing faces with site numbers and then remembering the names, but these familiar faces were not from the park. So a couple seconds later I’m out of my chair and Miss Laurie is hustling over to greet our unexpected Niagara visitors.

And then there were tears of joy, as Miss Teresa was beside herself, as she had pulled off the big surprise off flawlessly, so because we were still on shift we had a very short visit and made plans for dinner in Bayfield the next evening to catch up, on the latest happenings both with work and family. It’s my bad that I totally neglected to get any photos but it was so great to catch up, and hear what was happening, with our nomadic lifestyle we only seem to get together once or twice a year so there is always lots to catch up on. So we have made plans to get together before we head to Arizona this fall.

Birthdays do not cause the same excitement now that they did fifty or sixty years ago, imagine that. Fifty years ago I would have been thinking “WOW” I can legally get a drink in the bar that I have been drinking at for the last few years, now its all about the best happy hour…just saying.

So this morning Miss Laurie gave me a gift that the “Kitties” ordered off the internet photo included, she has went out of her way to tell everyone that it’s my birthday and to stop by for a shot, so I have set up a small shot bar on the table in front of the coach and have had a good stream of visitors to join me for a shot, and then she tells me that we are having  dinner with Bonnie and Rich and I am thinking what could possibly go wrong?

Well let me tell you many things can go wrong, the longer the afternoon goes on, the possible issues just keep multiplying as each shot is consumed. I have just discarded an empty bottle of Salted Watermelon whiskey from the Ole Smokey distillery in Tennessee, and I am working on the next bottle even as I write this blog in between shots….I am back to what can go wrong?

Well it’s three days after my birthday and now I am actually almost back to normal so now I can tell you what did go wrong…mid afternoon, not real sure on the exact time as I’m a few shots deep (actually multiple shots deep) and to my amazement in drives Robert and Susan some of our RV family from Newfoundland, now even Laurie didn’t know they were coming to visit, I had many people stopping to which me a happy birthday (at this point I’m way beyond happy), luckily for me at about five o’clock Miss Laurie thinks I should have a little nap before dinner…now can you say understatement! And apparently I was in agreement, so after a couple hours of naping she tries to wakes me for dinner, and not just dinner, but dinner with Robert, Susan, Richard, and Bonnie so not a real good place to make an even bigger fool of myself than I already had, but luckily she gives up and heads off to dinner without me.

Now the story should end there, but in my warped little mind I was thinking it would look even worse not to show up for my birthday dinner so I drag my sorry ass out of bed, get looking a little (at least in my mind) presentable and stager over to dinner. At this point pretty much everyone is amazed that I was upright let a lone made it to dinner and I’m sure everyone (especially Miss Laurie) was a little more than nervous that I had made dinner, but all went very well, dinner was great, we had some birthday cake, a little hopefully somewhat coherent conversation and it was off to bed for me…with no major incidents.

Well the day after my birthday was filled with much pain, and as you all know Sunday is honey wagon day at the park, my only blessing was it was my day on the tractor, so needless to say it was one of my longer days at the park would be a major understatement. And then there is the whole visitors from Newfoundland, where, why, when, how long…all these questions will be answered in good time…just stay tuned.