surprise!

Yesterday I had a final critique in a class to conduct and then two meetings with two different colleagues. The first meeting was set for about 11 a.m. and the second was set for 1 p.m. The second was set up initially to meet after my class would officially end (but being the final class I knew it wouldn't run that long). I had hoped that I could just bump the second meeting up to right after the first. Things didn't work out quite the way I had hoped.

My first meeting colleague (B.) popped up about 11:30 and he was with the colleague I was supposed to meet later (T.). I mentioned to T. that I'd like to meet sooner than later if possible because that would give me more time to go home and relax before I had to be back at 4:30 for office hours and my second class. T. wasn't having it—he told me he had other things he had to do and had to meet with someone at 12:00. He asked if we could meet at 12:30 instead. Okay, I thought, at least that's a half an hour earlier. I was tempted to see if we could just meet today instead, but he had set it up and is the department chair so I just decided to go with it.

B. and I sat down for our meeting and talked for almost an hour—awesome, it's 12:30 already, T. should be around any minute. Another colleague of mine (J.) showed up and started telling us this really animated story of how she almost got snowed at her cabin out east over the weekend. Finally at 12:45, T. showed up ready for our meeting, but with a catch. Instead of meeting in my office or in his he wanted to meet in the diner (our faculty/staff break area). He said he was hungry and hadn't had any lunch yet. So I packed up my stuff and the two of us headed over to the diner along with J. and B.

I got to the diner door—with J. in the lead—and she stepped back and told me to go ahead. My initial thought was, "Why don't you get the door? I've got all this crap in my hand." But, I stepped up and punched in the code. When I got the door open it was totally dark and I flipped on the light switch. That's when I heard it.

"SURPRISE!!!" was being yelled out in my general direction. There sat a huge chunk of people that I work with there to celebrate with me at a surprise baby shower. There was cake and snacks and a whole bunch of presents for the Wee One. It was incredible and I was absolutely speechless—not an easy thing to do.

I felt so incredibly loved by all my colleagues at that moment. J. had planned it all and it had apparently been in the works for a couple of weeks. I had no idea. Books, a baby tub, baskets filled with goodies, little toys, clothes, and lots of gift cards—great things to make the Wee One's journey into this world that much easier. It was great fun and there were lots of pictures taken. Here's a few from the festivities.