Sneaking around at 3:00am...

3:00 am! It's Sunday morning and my Alarm buzzer on my phone is going off. But it's not a mistake. I sleepily crawl out of bed and stagger to the bathroom to wash my face. Then I sneak next door to make sure my suite mates are awake. Yep, they are wiping the sleep out of their eyes too! We grab our flash lights and quietly tiptoe down the hall, careful to make sure we haven't disturbed anyone! We're not sneaking out of the dorm, we're headed to someone's room. It's not just anyone's room either...it's our dear Annie! Today she is turning 27, and we are celebrating early.

We arrive at her bedroom door, but make not a sound. Quietly we put together our piece of artwork. We want it to be a perfect surprise for when she steps out in the morning! It doesn't take long. Only a few minutes and we are done. As a final gesture of love, we leave a note at the door - "We love you!" Then we are gone!

It's hard to go back to bed and back to sleep. I toss and turn til nearly 4am. Finally I fall back asleep for a couple hours. (After all, it's Sunday, so I can sleep in a LITTLE!)

Later, at breakfast we enjoy fellowship with our friends. "Did you hear?" someone asks... "Someone toilet-papered Annie's door last night?" "Oh really?" I ask in mock surprise! "I wonder WHO would do that!" One of my friends and I cast each other knowing looks, but no one else knows what's going on. We just smile! "Yeah," our informant continues. "You should have seen the look on Annie's face when she opened the door this morning! It was priceless. But she thought it was cute and handed out her camera for us to take a picture." We smile. "That's neat! We wish we could have been there." We go on with breakfast...

No one will ever know! And they'd be shocked if they did...to learn that one of the oldest and two of the youngest kids around conspired together to show Annie their love in a different and unique way. [Of course, no one knows that originally I thought that we should ALL go piling into her room at 12:01am to wish her a Happy Birthday! That way we'd be the first to wish her a happy Birthday, and it would be one that I'm sure she would never forget!] But...decided she probably needed her sleep. So we did what we did instead! Anyway, hopefully she got the message...that she is LOVED!!

WHAT FUN!!!! I feel like I am back in high school again, playing pranks on my classmates!

Hope she knows we REALLY DO love her!!!

Shhhhh....don't tell ANYONE!!!!

The next morning....

Our beautiful Annie with a cake from her family!! :-)