A Christmas Surprise

I have a confession to make: I’ve been keeping a secret. A big secret.

As many of you know, hubs and I both qualified for Boston at the same race back in May. It was an accomplishment made one hundred times greater since we were able to share it.

I didn’t have much confidence that our qualifying times would be “good enough” to earn spots in Boston 2012 with the new rolling registration process, so I was blown away when I received the good news in September.

Unfortunately we soon received notice that hubs had not gotten in with his 3:09:18 finish time. It was bittersweet and hard to be excited when I knew how devastated he was. The weeks passed and we came to terms with the fact that we would not be able to run our first Boston together. We planned our trip and hubs was nothing but supportive all along.

And then one day in November out of the blue, two of my friends came through for me with an amazing opportunity. One of the ladies that we run with works for Adidas and got her hands on an Invitational Entry for Boston 2012. It was originally intended for one of our other friends, who generously and selflessly offered it to me for hubs instead. The pieces came together over a couple of days — with a lot of sneaky behaviour on my part! — and soon I had that entry form in my hot little hands.

I was bursting at the seams with excitement and wanted to scream it from the rooftops, but managed to keep it quiet and told only a select few people. I decided that this would make the perfect Christmas surprise, though I had no idea how I would keep the secret for over a month. After sending in the completed forms, it was time to play the waiting game… ever so (im)patiently watching my email.

It finally arrived and his name appeared in the entry list online. It was official!

I confiscated hubs’ key mail key to ensure that he didn’t find the official confirmation card. I checked the mail box every single day, hoping it would arrive in time to wrap up – it ended up in the mailbox on December 23rd, the very last possible day!

I wrapped it up inside a gigantic chocolate bar (ironic?) and had to wait until Christmas morning.

I made sure it was his last gift and asked my sister to “discreetly” catch it on camera even though she didn’t know what it was. (Turns out we weren’t so discreet, but he still had no clue what was going on.)

Surprised and shocked would be an understatement to describe his reaction. Hubs was pretty much speechless until later once it had sunk in.

I can still hardly believe that we will get to share this experience afterall. Neither of us could ask for a greater gift and we are forever grateful to wonderful friends who helped make this dream come true.

It’s nice to see two “golden tickets” hanging on the fridge now:

111 sleeps til OUR FIRST BOSTON!