Tricked the kids pretty good

[ponyboy]

We have a 10 day trip planned over Thanksgiving. Now that the bigger kids are older and they need a little heads up on being gone for a while because of sports and school and stuff I couldn't wait until the last minute to tell them like we had in the past.

So I ordered some personalized maps of the parks and was trying to figure out a way to tell them that would be fun, maybe not so much for them but for me, and the opportunity magically presented itself.

Now, I don't get mad much at the kids so if I do they know it's serious. Well, here lately the phone bill has been pretty high because they have been going over their data limit. I've been telling them to stay on the wifi at home and don't be watching movies all of the time when they're on data.

We have 5 kids with 5 smartphones, so there are a lot of opportunities for them to use up a bunch. Well this last month my oldest son used 14GB of data all by himself. My wife had chewed on him and I had said something to him already but later that night I made a big deal out of it and pretended like I was really mad and had all of the kids go into the living room and sit on the couch. I was saying stuff about staying on the wifi and not watching movies and I tossed the two envelopes containing the maps to them and told them to look through all of the pages of data they used.

The look on their faces when they realized that I wasn't actually mad and they weren't in trouble and that we were going to DW was priceless. I play a lot of tricks on the kids but that was one of the best ones. It was hard for me to keep a straight face when I was griping and I looked at their stoic faces.

It was kind of mean but sometimes the end justifies the mean

 

[planningjollyholiday]

Thanks for sharing, I love surprise stories. Hope you and your family have a wonderful time!

 

[jennilee171]

Love the surprise story! I wish I could have pulled it off!!

 

[rastika]

That's actually really cute! Are your kids super excited now?

 

[ponyboy]

That's actually really cute! Are your kids super excited now?

Oh yeah. They love DW more than any other vacation. Every time there's a Disney commercial on TV they talk about it for an hour. My youngest one (10) is excited because he's, as he said, "not a baby anymore" and he's going to ride all of the rides. Granted he rode most of them once last time when he was 8 but I had to trick him to get on Everest and he wasn't happy with me at all when we were on the ride and he realized it wasn't the "mini mine train" like I had told him.

This will be our longest trip to date and they're excited about that and also about being there over Thanksgiving. They're already talking about eating at the Biergarten and then watching Illuminations.

I still have one trick up my sleeve for them though. I've been on the ball with getting everything setup with Disney but not so much with our flights. It's a month out and I haven't got tickets yet and I was looking today and the prices are almost twice what they were the last time I looked. I've got a buddy with a couple of jets so I called him today about leasing one to fly us out there since at this point the cost won't be too terribly much more.

I'm not going to tell them about that though. We'll just pack everything up like we're going to Dallas to catch a flight there but instead we'll just go right up the street.

None of them have ever flown private before and that will blow their mind. 5 minute drive instead of an hour, no waiting, no TSA, no lines. Just show up, jump on the plane and take off!