I am in Canada this week for American Thanksgiving.
I know. I’ve always been a bit confused.
Last week was a frenzy of voting and downright begging for people to vote for me. In fact, I’m still doing so because the public can vote here daily until Nov. 29. In case you missed my announcement, I am 1 of 5 semi-finalists to blog at the Olympics for Microsoft Office. I even launched a “Just One Tweet” Whrrl campaign to get Ellen Degeneres to tweet for me.
Because she has, like 3 million followers on Twitter juxtaposed against my 3.
Since returning to my childhood home in Calgary, my frenzied pace has slowed down to being fed three meals a day and having in-house babysitters thrilled to play with their grandchildren.
I may never leave.
My husband remained in Denver for work and I’m always a bit worried when traveling alone with the children (for the reason why see one of my many family travel disasters). Shockingly, everything went smoothly and the only mishap was when my hair got caught in the seat belt of my parent’s SUV. OK, this is an understatement. The shoulder belt completely devoured a large section of my curly mop right up to the crown of my head. My dad was one step away from having to give me a buzz cut to get it to release.
At least my head would have resembled a shiny tree ornament for the holidays
We will be here for 12 days, the longest we’ve been away from my husband Jamie. I wanted to do something above-and-beyond daily phone calls to let him know we were thinking of him.
And to remind him that the peace and quiet he’s enjoying during his throwback to bachelorhood really does suck.
I recruited my 5-year-old daughter and we made cards for every day we’d be gone and hid them all over the house. Hadley wanted to draw a map. I told her it would be easier to just do a master key detailing the location of his scavenger hunt and we’d call him every day with the clue.
Sound seamless? This is me we’re talking about.
In the beginning, everything went as planned. We drew, we hid and we wrote the master key. I was careful to place it in my purse so I would not forget it at home. That first morning in Canada, I went to call him with his first clue….
….and it was gone. Vanished from my purse. Some swarmy member of the Taliban likely swiped it when I was busy telling the grumpy Customs officials I was, in fact, their friend not foe.
Or more likely I am just always cursed.
I broke the news to Jamie and begged him not to tell Hadley I had screwed up our surprise. “We’ll just have a different kind of scavenger hunt,” I consoled him. “One where I try to recall where we hid all 12 of the cards!”
This, from the woman who finally remembered where she cached her husband’s Christmas present six months after the fact.
It’s going to be a long 12 days.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 