Baby Gant Days: Surprising Grandma

On Friday we three left Austin for Cleveland to take part in the scheduled surprise 60th birthday party for Grandma Gant. We first had to endure a 1hr 15min ground delay on our flight. As we pulled away from the gate and headed toward the runway, the pilot turned left instead of right, and I said to Drew, "It looks like we're heading for a airplane parking lot." Which of course is exactly where we were headed. All the storms in the region were messing up the air traffic and leaving no room for planes like us to take off. So we waited. Jasper was really great. He got fussy when he was hungry, and he has unfortunately stopped being willing to fall asleep in our arms - so consequently he didn't sleep more than a couple short cat naps on the flight. That made the normally 3 hr, turned 4 hour flight more taxing on us - but we all made it through well.

Our delay also left us short on "freshening up" time. We worked as fast as we could, but we still headed out to the party (from Lou & Kathleen's house) fully assuming we'd miss the actual surprise. If you can believe it, as we pulled off the highway in Louann's Tahoe and sat at the bottom of the exit ramp just yards away from the party site, Drew all of a sudden said "Don't look. Don't look. Don't look." Heck if I knew what he was talking about, but moments later as a dark green Saab passed us in the nearest lane he turned to me and said, "There are my parents right there in that car!" He hadn't made eye contact with them, but he was pretty sure they had seen him. So we drove down the road past the party site just to make sure we didn't spoil the surprise completely. We walked in to greet the birthday girl, and she said "I knew I saw you!"

Jasper was unfortunately really sleepy (without his naps) and didn't do so well seeing all the strangers, but he hung in there. It was a fabulous turn out to celebrate Pam's life and her wonderful influence on the many people she has met and touched through church, preschool and work.