It has been an eventful few weeks around here with some interesting (and annoying) happenings.  The day the kids got out of school, my bank alerted me that there was some fraudulent charges on my bank account.  Also that day, my tire got a nail in it making it flat and necessitated a trip to the tire repair store.  The kids got out of school and my youngest came home crying about something that happened at school.  That weekend, 2 of the 3 boys ended up with a nasty cold (with the last one getting it a few days later).  Santa apparently brought hacking, fevers and runny noses to our house (and many others from what I hear) this year.

When we got home from celebrating Christmas in the mountains, I was alerted that my website was attacked/hacked and there was malware in it.  10 days later and I still don’t have a working website.  STUPID hackers!!!!  I am working on trying to fix the problem, but I have spent hours and hours on hold and emailing everyone I can think of to try to get my website up and running again.  So much for being productive and getting things done this last week.

Yesterday we came home from a wonderful and relaxing time celebrating New Years at our family cabin and I accidentally flooded our upstairs sink.  Ugh.  Think water spewing down into the garage.  The giant fan is working overtime….still.

And my website is still not working!!!

However.  I don’t really have any room to complain.    We had a wonderful time with family and friends celebrating Christmas and New Years.

And now it is time to celebrate again.  Guess who is going to be 40 in a few days??  THIS GIRL!  I have always hated my birthday as it is only 11 days after Christmas.  Everyone is out of money and sick of celebrating and so am I.  So when my husband starting asking me what I wanted to do for my 40th birthday I didn’t know what I wanted.  I knew one thing for sure…I didn’t want a party.  I am not much of a party person and prefer more intimate get-togethers with close friends.  I really wanted to go somewhere but it is hard to do that right after Christmas.  But I love to travel and we don’t do it that often (except that we just went to NYC alone….such lushes—the kids were not happy to hear that they are staying home—AGAIN—).  Sorry kids.  You will understand when you turn 40.

In November I was having lunch with one of my oldest and best friends (who also happens to be turning 40 two days before me) and we hatched a plan.  We had heard about people taking spontaneous trips and just showing up at the airport and buying a cheap ticket on the next flight.  We thought it sounded like a blast and proposed the trip to our spouses.  They loved the idea and so it began.

The funniest part about this is that Stacy and I are both planners.  Not just planners…..but obsessive OCD planners.  So this is totally outside of our comfort zone and we are actually really excited about it.  Which is really funny as I HATE surprises!  I guess I am changing in my old age.

Chris chatted with his cousin’s wife who does ticket sales for United and she strongly discouraged just showing up at the airport and buying a ticket.  She said we would probably have to sit around for a long time and then it might be tricky to get a cheap ticket that way.  I was really sad as I thought it would really fun to be completely spontaneous.  So I got the idea to have someone else find us a deal on tickets and buy them for us using our credit card but use their email so we wouldn’t know where we were going.  My friend Vicki is the BEST bargain hunter in the world and so while we were up in the mountains together for New Years I asked her to find a deal….and she did.  She had fun trying to find us a deal and planning our trip for us.  She even found us a rental car for $17 a day!!!  That is crazy awesome!

The rest of the trip will be totally spontaneous.  As soon as we find out our destination tomorrow morning we will start looking for deals on Hotels and things to do.

I plan on doing a lot of Instagramming and Facebooking and Social Mediaing so that you can all follow along in all of our Shenanigans.  I promise it will be a lot of fun!!

So are you in??  Want to turn 40 with me and have a huge Social Media Birthday Party??  Make sure you follow me on Instagram @lilo_photography and I would love to hear your suggestions if you have ever been to our mystery destination.

Stay tuned.  Our flight leaves Denver International Airport at 9:10 tomorrow morning.  Until then….this planner has to try to figure out how to pack for a mystery destination.

Lisa- the 39 year old boring planner.  About to be Lisa- the 40 year old fun spontaneous traveler.