the surprise.

here is a picture of ben's oldest brother matt, and his wife jennie.

matt is honestly one of the best people i have ever known.  genuinely good to the core, how many people can you say that about these days??  {by the way, his wife jennie just as awesome...maybe even more awesome than matt.  but this post is about him, so i will carry on.}


matt has been there for our little family when we needed support, good advice, and unconditional love.  specifically multiple times last year when there were some rough days.


this year, on christmas day, was matt's 40th birthday.  we haven't been out to visit his family in texas and decided that if there was any way we could be there to celebrate with him, we wanted to make it happen.  


luckily ben was able to round up some of his family members to join us for the surprise, we made plans and amazingly enough, pulled it off.  {ben is convinced that matt was onto us, but whether or not he knew, we saw him shed a few tears as we surprised him, and the emotion was genuine.}


the surprise was set up in 4 stages, so he could be surprised with each individual family:

• matt's own family decorating & surprising him with a family party.....

• ben & i hiding in the closet when he came home from work to change.....

• carrie, troy, bailey & carter hiding in the minivan & screaming out while he drove down the street to the restaurant....

• then ginny {my MIL} walking down the street in the neighborhood as matt drove by.

they all went off without a hitch and it was so fun!

anyway, i'm going to write about our time in texas, but for now, here are some pictures of the initial surprise.

setting up decorations:

ben hiding in the closet:

leah hiding in the closet:

june sleeping through all of the screaming:

the official SURPRISE!! face:

a hug:

going out to dinner, eating the most amazing fajitas, wearing our awesome MATT IS OVER THE HILL t-shirts, complete with his face on the front, and a picture of him riding a jazzy on the back:

 {carrie makes me laugh.}

singing cumpleanos feliz with a sombrero:

scaring june with the song:

then we went home to the kids, and got settled in for a week of birthday & christmas fun.