I had this great idea on going to Disneyland in March so we could do something else rather than shopping, and at the same time, I was suspicious that my wife and kids were going to surprise me on my birthday, like the previous years. Every country we visit, we go shopping, take pictures, I could go on… and that's why we were going to spend the day at Disneyland. One day my son Mazen asked me if we were going to do something fun before we go back to Tirana, then Junal answered Mazen and said, “Live your life to the fullest because it only happens once.” I was dazzled, I looked at her in a way that meant, "how did you get smart that fast?" Typical Mazen would always come up with something to prove her wrong but this time he had no reaction. My wife wasn't on her phone, so I knew something was up. Something big. At least that's what they made me think.

When we arrived at the hotel where we had booked a suite, we all unpacked our bags, put on our pyjamas and got ready to sleep. For some reason, all the restaurants were closed, we bought some snacks from the supermarket. After a moment of awkwardness everyone slept which wasn't normal, especially for Mazen. Around two a.m, someone "gently" got out of bed and went out the door, I then quickly opened my phone so I could pinpoint my son or daughter's location on an app called find my friends. It turned out it was my son Mazen and he was in the lobby and at this point I knew that a plan was being cooked. I put on my clothes and went and followed my son. My wife then quickly sent Mazen a message saying that I was behind him and so my son Mazen quickly left his phone on the table and hid until the coast was clear and ran up to the room when I was looking the other way. When I pinpointed where the phone was, I just found it laying on the table which was kind of weird. So I then took the phone and went up to the room and tried to sleep but I couldn't. The next day, we all woke up and my wife and I told our kids we were going shopping, when we were actually going to Disneyland. We wanted to surprise them.

While I was getting dressed, I saw my wife Sally winking at Mazen and at this point I was finally sure that something was actually going on.

When everyone was done eating breakfast, we got on the car and were on our way to Disneyland, Mazen and Junal  were so happy and said, "Thanks dad!" When we bought the tickets, I picked out the best rides because I had been there several times. Five hours later, when we had been on all the cool roller coasters and had had some fun, we decided to go back home.

On the way home my son asked me, "Do you like surprises?" and I answered saying, "Umm yeah, I guess." When we went back to the hotel everything was dark and suddenly everyone screamed,"Happy Birthday!" and one of the people that were in the crowd was my friend from 1st grade, don't ask how I recognized him. The receptionist got a huge cake and they all sang happy birthday to me and we had a wonderful day. Now I knew why everyone was acting so strangely the past two days.