The Backwards Surprise, a Homecoming Tale.

about two years ago (roughly) My very large extended family all congregated together at the Bush intercontinental airport to see my baby brother Stephen,

Yes girls I KNOW, get it out of your systems..."He is SO hot!" and for those
of you who knew him in Memphis, "THAT is Stephen? WOW!" yeah yeah...

off on his mission. 

What's that? A bunch of good looking Shivers? Oh Yeah!

So anyways, we spent the last two years, you know, living our lives while HE was out in the Philippines spreadin' the ole "good news" and "convertin' the heathen" and all that jazz.

 Well, it got to be late this summer and the topic of 'The exact date' of Stephen getting home started popping up in emails. We finally found out that he would be coming home on January 11th.  It was after Christmas, but we were just happy to know which day to count down to. 

    Welp...we started counting weeks back in November, when I THOUGHT we were still 8 weeks away...

  Friday night, when I had my family over for a little first birthday party for Aubrey ( next blog, I promise, there are Rainbow cupcake pictures from THAT one!) My dad told us that we needed to make sure we were all at his house the next day for the little Christmas party they were having, because when it was over, we were all going to get in the car and drive to the airport to PICK UP MY BROTHER!

   My first thought was, "Crap! Why is he coming home early? did he SERIOUSLY do something to get sent home when he is ONLY four weeks away from his return date??" Turns out, he knew that this was the day he was coming home all along and TOLD us that it was January! Pretty sneaky little bro, pretty sneaky...

     WELL the plan was that My dad knew about it, and no one else. He was going to pick up my brother from the airport and have him walk into a big christmas party. Well as the day got closer and Daddy got the flight information, he found that the flight would be ARRIVING at 12:45 a.m. in Houston, which is an hour and a half away from where they live, and where the party would have been. That wasn't going to work. So Daddy (who had told mom like a month before the actual date he was coming home) decided to turn the 'surprise' aspect around on Stephen and have us all meet him at the airport, even though he wasn't expecting it.

   SO to catch you all up, Stephen was going to surprise us all by "coming home early for christmas" but we turned it around and surprised HIM by being at the airport instead. It's like "Missionary Inception" a surprise within a surprise.

Mom has a Cricut, and got all crazy-excited about
making signs.

  We got to the airport at 12:30 and decided how we were going to play it out. Those that "knew" he was coming home (as far as Stephen knew Mom didn't even know) waiting out by the gate to see him. The rest of us waited around the corner. We had made signs for him and everything, PLUS dad had someone film the whole thing.  When he got out of the gate, daddy had him walk around to corner to "get to the escalator" and there we all were! He was adequately surprised and we all made a lot of noise, and hugged him, and had a great little homecoming. 

Oh yeah, I got the first hug!

Meeting his niece for the FIRST TIME!!

Telling us some important "mission thing"

Rob did most of the work gluing the words to the poster board once mom had cut them out. Bonus points if you get the references on the poster on top. Stephen kept his ridiculous sense of humor throughout the mission and wrote about the holy spirit "roundhouse kicking people in the face" and other such things. So this was appropriate.

The group with "big Steve"

So, my baby brother is back in, what he referred to in all his emails, "The great motherland of TEXAS"  and we are SO happy to have him back! (despite the fact that he still has to correct himself when he gets all excited and starts talking in Tagolog)

    

         Welcome home Stephen! Now brace for impact, we all know the girls are waiting.....