Surprise!

Sawyer's 16th birthday was in July and we took her to Jekyll Island in celebration.  She knew we would have a birthday present for her.  She just didn't know it would be this:

 

We arrived Friday and surprised her with the new used car Saturday.  We planned to spend the week on the island.

Leading up to the "unveiling" there was an elaborate ruse developed to get the car to the island Friday without her knowing about it.  Essentially, here's what Sawyer was told:  I was called to a "last minute business meeting" in Brunswick - the closest city to the island.  A "colleague" was to pick me up in Macon and I would ride to Brunswick with him.  After the meeting, he would drop me off at the hotel and I would be there when Tim, Sawyer and the Brindle Kids arrived. 

What really happened was that I left early Friday morning in the MINI and drove to the island.  I hid it on the other side of the hotel parking lot.  Just in case she saw it, she was told that there was a huge MINI event being held at the island's new convention center.

Early Saturday morning, I left the room to "check on the status of our hotel bill."  I was really moving the car to the beach and putting the bow on top of it.  Then I went back to the room to get Tim, Sawyer, and the Brindle Kids for our morning walk on the beach. 

I kept talking up the MINI convention, so it was no surprise when, in the edge of the surf, Sawyer found a tiny, tiny blue MINI.  I told her that the MINI people were giving away lots of MINI SWAG and this must have been dropped and it washed up on the shore.  A little farther up the beach, Sawyer found a slightly larger blue MINI model in the surf.  (Tim was walking ahead of us with Truly.  He was the designated "dropper.")  Wow, those MINI people must have really given away a lot of SWAG.  A little farther and she found a plastic ziploc bag floating in the waves.  It had a MINI shirt in in.  It was her size!  A little farther and there was a black MINI box, also sealed in a ziploc bag, floating in the water.  Inside was a MINI key chain with a MINI key attached.  O.K.  Now we have got to find the MINI people and let them know someone lost their key.  We walked up the beach to the hotel.  Right at the end of the path was the car.  It was a wonderful day!

Since before we arrived on the island, we knew Tropical Storm Beryl was coming up the eastern coast toward us.  Based on what we were hearing on the news, we would be in for a lot of rain through Sunday, but we thought we'd wait it out.

It rained so hard Saturday night that we woke up to thoroughly soaked carpet Sunday morning.  The revised weather forecast called for rain through Wednesday.  Despite our plans to "weather the storm," and given the following:

1. Sawyer couldn't drive her new car in the storm,
2. the female Brindle Kid hates to potty on a leash and despises potty-ing on a leash in the rain,
3. and wet carpet doesn't smell good,

we made the pretty quick decision to check out and drive back home.

We arrived back home mid-day to the rest of our vacation week and plenty of time to try out the new MINI, now named "Marilyn."