Day 825: The Crossword

First things first...Happy Easter everyone, even if I am writing this at almost 10 at night and Easter, for much of the world, is already over. Regardless, it's been a long day filled with Disney things, and you all know what today meant. That's right, Easter is when Mom decided Dad and the brother were finding out about our Disney Trip this June, meaning that they, as of now, finally know about this extra vacation that's thrown in to celebrate my parents' anniversary. 

Now...after all my talk over the past month and a half or so about this trip and how to tell them about it, I'm sure you're wondering how it all worked out. After a long period of time trying to figure out how to surprise them while kind of making them work for it, I came up with a crossword puzzle for them to figure out, which looked something like the following. Actually that's the crossword...it looks exactly like the following. 

This isn't the complete one, as the ones they worked on today also had specific letters boxed in that, when they unscrambled them, read "Walt Disney World June Sixth-Tenth." It took them what felt like an eternity to get all the answers...although they probably would have finished faster if they actually worked together instead of just sitting and copying off of one another every time one of them figured out a word. With a little help from me, it didn't take long to unscramble the letters though, and then the secret was out. 

Now, maybe they could have bee a little more excited about the whole thing. If it had been me I probably would have cried, although they are guys, so they probably wanted to appear more masculine or something. Either way, the crossword worked great, especially since some of the clues and words definitely had to do with the trip itself, such as "The Iron Spike Room," which led to "Wilderness Lodge," the resort at which we're staying. 

Other than that, my cousin made me this lovely present, which will have a place of honor in my bedroom at home since I unfortunately don't have that perfect place for it in my dorm room right now. Next year, on the other hand, I might be able to fit it in. Either way, I love it, and it's definitely just another way Disney appeared in my Easter Celebrations today! 

That all being said, I hope you had a lovely Easter! I'll see you all tomorrow! 

Have a magical day!

Day 818: The Big Surprise

We all love a good surprise, or at least most of us do. When it comes to Disney Trips, however, I've only really been surprised by one once: the day I found out my High School Band was headed to Walt Disney World for a performance and a workshop. I do, however, love watching surprises on YouTube where parents surprise their kids with a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World. I've talked about them before, and really, there are some creative ways of telling your family members about the trip, but trying to come up with those creative ways is a lot harder than it looks.

Then again...I'm also not surprising a couple of kids.

My mom and I, along with many of my friends and half the world at this point, have been carefully treading our way around telling my Dad and my brother for months now. It's gotten pretty close here and there...today, for instance, my friend Ashley was texting me and when she laughed, my brother asked to see her phone. I quickly texted something for her to laugh at that my brother would think normal (AKA Colin O'Donoghue spam...just tons of pictures, one after the other). He did, and luckily it put him off of the idea for a while. Dad's a bit easier to get around since I don't see him as much, but I've definitely had a few moments where I almost slipped up, mostly thanks to the slides of old Disney we've been looking at just about every weekend.

But now there's less than a week left until they find out. Mom told me initially that she was going to tell them on Easter, and that's not very far away, so we kind of have to come up with a plan on how to tell them. But, being me, I don't really want to do it in a classical way. We're not spending Easter at our house, which means we're not planning the Easter Egg hunt, and that makes for some problems right off the bat, and throws out the idea of an Easter Egg scavenger hunt to tell them. So Mom and I have spent some time this afternoon trying to figure out what to do instead and to be completely honest...I still have no idea.

Well...I didn't have an idea until just now. The thing is, when you're trying to surprise someone who's not a kid, you have extra things to consider. You can't just put together pictures of random things because if we did that, they'd have it figured out in a few seconds. No, you want to prolong the angst and the surprise...so how do you do that?

Ultimately, it took a while, but after searching through list after list of ideas, I think I've come up with the perfect idea: a Crossword. Now, I'm not finished with it yet and to be completely honest, I literally just came up with this idea about three minutes ago, so I still have a lot of work to do the rest of this week to figure it out. However, I'm pretty sure this is gonna be great, and I'll get back to you in a week to tell you how it all went down!

Which leaves me with a question for all of you: How would you surprise your family with a trip to Disney? Also, let me know if you have any fun surprise stories!

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on March 30 due to Midterms).