The Water Guns

*If you are friends with me on Facebook, you have probably already heard about this, but here is the full story.

As we were out visiting friends this last week, I realized we have very few days left here on the base.  I wanted to do something fun, and surprise Forrest.  I plotted with some friends....and came up with this little scheme.  F and his buddy would go for a jog in the battlefield.  On the way back, they would notice a small water gun on the road, and F's friends would encourage him to pick it up.  Then, O and I would ambush him with our much larger, much fuller water guns.  That was the plan at least.

 This is what actually happened....
I waited until the day of, to purchase the water guns because O had to be with me, and O is not known for keeping secrets.  I explained to her as best as I could that she couldn't say anything...at all.  She agreed excitedly.

About 15 seconds after F walked in the door, O informed him that she had a 'secret' then looked at me, laughed, and said, 'I didn't say it!'  Well, no you didn't say it, but you gave away our surprise.  Now daddy knows something is up.  Daddy tried to coax it out of her, and after seeing me get upset decided to play nice, and ignore all the random things coming out of O's mouth.  She said, 'is it time to squirt him?' 'I can't wait until after dinner' and on and on.  I finally gave her an ultimatum.  You say anything else, we are not doing it.  That helped for about an hour.  Then she drew a picture of water guns and how much water was in them.  *Sigh* don't tell 5 year olds secrets....ever.

FINALLY, after almost 6 hours of torture, F and his friend left to run.  In order to keep F from knowing we had the water guns I left them in our van.  I had a time frame of 25 minutes from when they left to when they would be in the right spot for us to get them (this was according to F's buddy).  So the moment the door clicked shut, we were up and changing our clothes.  I insisted we wear pants because the ticks out here are bad.  I sprinted/dragged my daughter outside to the parking lot, and plain as day the guys were just barely across the parking lot.  Great. We ducked behind vehicles until we got to ours.  I grabbed our bags, and back upstairs we went.  In the elevator, I started taking the packaging off the larger water guns, and then we dashed down the hall to our room.  We filled the guns and I noticed the one I purchased for O did not have a cap to keep the water in.  Yes, I bought a defaulty water gun.  No time to complain, where's the tape?  We taped it up as best as we could and hurried out to the battlefield.  I had 13 minutes to get across two parking lots, and a street, and into the woods so F wouldn't see us coming on the long straight path.  Again I dragged O with all the water guns, and we started getting some funny looks.  One guy said, 'You're awesome!' and lots of chuckles as apparently they all knew what we were up to.

We got in place, with 3 minutes to spare.  I was wearing a gray tshirt that clearly showed just how hot and sweaty I was.  O's water gun had been spilling water on her the entire time we were running.  It was now half empty.  It looked like we had already had a water fight. 

I threw the smallest water gun out on the side of the road (more in the grass/leaves than on the road).  And we waited.  I explained to O it would be a few more minutes and she had to hold really still so daddy wouldn't see us.

25 minutes later we were still waiting.  This might be a good time to mention the temprature of the day...99 degrees with 91% humidity.  And I made us wear pants.  OH MY.  In my haste to get out the door, I didn't spray even one drop of bug spray on us.  Hot and muggy, just what mosquitos love.  Random strangers kept passing us by and several of them stopped to talk.  I tried to politely ask them to stop talking because they were giving away our hiding spot.

We were itchy, and hot, and swatting at bugs and I was just about to call it off, when they came up the road.  

'Get ready, O!  Here they come!'  

No one stopped to grab the water gun, so I hopped out and started spraying.  My husband (having been trained in what to do in an ambush) just kept running.  He finally turned around, laughed and asked what was going on.  I just kept spraying him.  O couldn't get her water gun to work, so daddy took it from her and then sprayed me.  

It ended just as quick as it began.  I asked O if she thought it was worth it waiting so long and she said, 'totally!  I got my daddy'  :-)

I think he enjoyed himself.

O is still playing even though there is no more water.