Being the serious first born that I (Christina) am, I like to have a plan…for everything! Quent was so sneaky! On Tuesday, August 12th Quent had a softball game. Before he walked out the door that evening I heard him say, “Bye! Don’t forget to pack!” I was upstairs and I thought to myself, “Did he just say ‘don’t forget to pack’? Nah, he must have said, ‘I’ll see you when I get back!’” And so I went about my evening as normal, thinking nothing of it. He came home after his game and took a shower. After his shower I heard all of this noise going on in our bedroom. I walked down there and saw two suitcases open on our bed and he was putting a stack of his clothes into one of them. I stopped in my tracks and asked, “What are you doing?” He said in an excited tone, “I’m packing!” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because we are going on a trip!” It was then that my face curled up in this ‘I don’t get it’ expression. I was like, “Huh?” I kept on asking him questions like, “Why? Huh? Are you serious?” It seemed like it took awhile to get the information out of him of where we were going. Finally he told me we were going up to the interior for a vacation. Suddenly the lightbulb in my head went on and I remembered something our friend, who works at Alaska Airlines, asked me a couple of weeks before. She said, “So why are you going to Anchorage?” I was like, “Huh? I’m not going to Anchorage.” She was like, “You aren’t? I thought I saw your name on the list.” Then she covered her mouth and was like, “Oh, I hope I didn’t ruin a surprise.” I remember thinking for a split second that maybe Quent set up some surprise vacation. But then I thought, “Nah!” The thought and conversation never came back to memory until he told me where we were going. I told him what my friend had said. Haha! I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was so shocked and didn’t know what to do first. All I knew was that I had better pack fast. We were leaving on Thursday morning, the 14th of August. Quent was so proud to keep it a surprise from me only 36 hours before take-off. He bought the tickets on January 31, 2008. Sneaky indeed!
We flew into Anchorage and arrived there around 2:00, I believe. When we walked out into the airport off of the jet I asked Quent if he was going to call his brother Nathan right away. Nathan was going to let us borrow his truck for our trip and he was picking us up from the airport. He said he would just wait until we got down to baggage claim. I said that I was going to use the restroom, so he could call him while I was in there. He didn’t want to do that. I thought that was weird. So we walked down to baggage claim and he sat down at a pay phone and began to dial. He had a note with our calling card written on it and Nathan’s number. He kept on pushing the receiver down and I asked him what the trouble was. I remember thinking I had never seen him have so much trouble making a phone call before. Haha! He suggested that maybe I go wait for our luggage and that he could already see some of our stuff coming out on the belt. So I walked over there. He came after a few minutes and said that Nathan was running some errands and would be there in about 15 minutes. We went outside with all of our stuff and sat on this bench. Quent said that maybe we could walk over to this statue and he could take my picture. I said, “Only if we bring all of our stuff with us.” So we began to carry all of our stuff over and I saw Nathan’s truck coming. There were these huge pillars and Nathan parked right behind one. I kept on looking over to see him. I thought he would come out of the truck and come over to see us right away, but he didn’t. He walked to the back of his truck and opened up the topper. I remember seeing his face through the tinted windows and thinking that his face was rounder than I remembered. By this time we were walking toward the truck. We were pretty close and all of a sudden our friend Sara walks out from behind the pillar. I stopped in my tracks. Then Pat walked out from behind the truck (that’s who I thought was Nathan). I stood there for a moment trying to register why I was seeing them and then I realized that they were coming on the trip with us. I began to jump up and down and screamed in pure delight! I was SO excited! I hugged Sara. People around us were watching and smiling. It was a joyous moment! It’s funny because I remember saying that morning before we went to the airport that the only thing that would make the trip even better was if Pat and Sara were coming. Quent said that when I said that it made him feel really good knowing that. I began to ask all of these questions, “How long have you known about this?” Turns out they knew about this trip when we saw them in May. Sneaky!! I couldn’t believe it!
The journey begins…
