A Lesson In Secrets and Happy Surprises

See that smile?

Yep, we love it too. And Scott and I like to maintain the Happy-Go-Lucky Jack as much of the time as we can. That is the lesson we learned today on our Misadventures Downtown. Hopefully by the time Jack is old enough to read this he will have forgiven us for our amazing lack of planning!

We found out last night that some of Jack's favorite Disney/Pixar characters were supposed to be at the Children's Museum of Denver: Life Sized Lightning McQueen, Mater, and Finn McMissile (who 'saves the world' by the way). What we didn't know until this morning was that the event, was that it was for one day only, and for five hours at that! What the heck?!?

But we thought (hoped, assumed - and you know what assuming makes of you and me...) that it would be a quick trip and some sort of file through and take a snapshot event. What we learned by happy accident is that by keeping it a surprise, we saved a lot of pain in the end.

We didn't tell him where we were going because we wanted to see the look on his face when he saw those guys. As we made our way up towards the museum with what should have been plenty of time we first ran into traffic.

Then, admittedly, I managed to get us lost despite the GPS.

When we finally got towards the correct exit Scott offered to drop us of so we could go see the cars. Well, then we saw the line...not only was the line of people blocks long, there were so many still trying to get in the cars were backed up onto the highway off-ramp!!! As we sat staring at the line we wondered what the best course of action would be. There was NO WAY we would be through the line before it closed. Beyond that we were not equipped for standing in an hour or more queue with a toddler and an infant.

...

Dena and Scott share a questioning glance

...

Nope, it wasn't going to happen. Thank God we hadn't told him what we were doing! There would have been no consolation for that boy. For once we were glad we decided not to tell him, even if it had been originally for selfish reasons.

As it turns out Scott had been wanting to visit the Caboose Hobbies model train store near downtown and we were going the right direction to get there. We turned towards the back of the car and said,

"Well Jack, guess where we're going? We're going to the Model Trains Store!"

"OH WOW THAT SOUNDS FUN!!!!"

So we stopped for a burger and made our way to the train shop, where we spent at least an hour with Jack dragging us aisle by aisle to look at all the stuff.

What could have been a disaster actually turned into one of the most fun days we've had in a while as a family.

So here's to being spontaneous and not always letting the kids in on the secret!

Until next time...