European Vacation – Day 1 (Boston – Vienna): We Actually Pulled Off Surprising Our Wives

Well, after over a year and a half of planning, it’s finally arrived: our 10th anniversary trip to Europe. This is our first “just mommy and daddy” excursion since our 5th anniversary trip (which consisted of two nights away in Boston…a nice time, but, hey, it was only two nights!), and it is by far the longest and farthest vacation we’ve ever taken.

So, why did it take a year and a half to plan an eleven-day vacation? Well, the idea hatched one night when a family friend was visiting us in town, and he and I were out running some errands while Tricia stayed at home with the kids. Their family had recently moved from Massachusetts to Utah, and what had become a tremendous friendship between our families was stripped of regular dinner get-togethers, sing-alongs, and Apprentice season finale parties.

Anyway, he and I started talking about what a great idea it would be to surprise our wives with a trip to Europe, and, particularly given how hard each of them is to surprise, if we could pull off keeping from them that we’d be traveling together. So for the last year and a half, he and I have been skimming funds from the family budgets, clandestinely developing the itinerary, and finding excuses why our wives really needed to renew their passports.

Yesterday, it finally came together in a single moment at gate E18 at the Atlanta airport, as you’ll see in this video: