Helsinki +22 Celsius degrees, thunderstorm.
Sunrise 5:25 am, sunset 9:24 pm.
Yesterday we had a perfect summer day. Our father turned 53 years and we decided to arrange him a surprise. The idea started couple of days ago when my sister called me and said that it would be nice to figure out something like that for him. I suggested that we would take him out for a dinner. My sister was happy about the idea and asked me to make a table reservation for all of us (that means nine persons all together: my sister, her husband and their son, my brother and his girlfriend, me and my boyfriend and of course our mom and dad). I promised to do so after confirming it from our mom.
When I called mom she was absolutely certain that dad wouldn’t agree on leaving anywhere from their construction site on Saturday (which is his birthday), because they have to work there hard so they can move there in the end of this month. She suggested to me that I would call dad and try to persuade him to join to dinner with me and Tuomo.
When I called dad he was absolutely against the idea, like I thought he would be. But for the reason I thought. He had decided to work very hard at the construction site for the end of the week and then on Saturday travel to Hanko with mom as a surprise to her. Since I couldn’t persuade him otherwise, I decided to ask everybody if we could all go to Hanko. This meant that I had to call mom and convince her that our plan wouldn’t work and we would have to postpone it to the future. Of course it’s never that easy to convince mom, but in the end it worked.
So yesterday morning I called my dad to congratulate him and incidentally enquired about their plans and schedule for the day. This way I was able to inform my sister and brother and we were able to plan our timing. My brother and his girlfriend came to pick me and Tuomo up and we drove to Karjaa, where we met my sister and her family. From Karjaa we drove all together to Hanko and ended up to the beach we knew mom and dad would be. We must have been a scene when we were sneaking between the dunes searching our loved ones! Finally we spotted familiar sight of my dad sleeping on his beach towel. We tiptoed just next to him and started to sing “Happy Birthday To You”. You should have seen his face! It was full of disbelief and confusion.
Rest of the day we spent at the beach eating cake, sandwiches, drinking coffee and juice, swimming and enjoying each others company. In the evening we went to wonderful restaurant to eat and drink. I think we were not back home until around 10 pm, feeling all happy and tired. But what a wonderful day it was…
