Saturday, April 3, 2010

It's called April Fool's Day....

....because April 1st is the day for pranks and jokes!

I will preface this post by saying I am not much of a jokester. Scott is probably the more clever of the two of us and goofs around a bit more than I do....that being said, this year, I mastered the April Fool's Day prank with our families. Pulling one excellent April Fool's Day every 30 years isn't the best track record, but this one was quite convincing and amusing so it made it worthwhile! 

The background about this April Fool's Day joke is that Scott & I are currently on a short holiday in Istanbul. Scott's company has a small office in Turkey, although it is a distributor business at the moment so they only directly employ a handful of people in the region. We were planning to meet the head of the Turkey office here and he offered to kindly host us for dinner one evening. It happened that we had dinner with this Turkish colleague of Scott's on April 1st, and following dinner Scott & I were discussing April Fool's Day. I suggested that we send an email to both of our families with some news that would catch them off guard....and so I sent out the following email to my parents, Scott's parents, and both of our siblings ---

Date: April 1, 2010
To: Moms, Dads, Brothers & Sister
Subject: Exciting News....

Greetings from Istanbul - 

We had a great day today sightseeing here in Istanbul, ending with a dinner tonight with Scott's colleague here. Good news from him and for us as a result....Scott has been offered a position to take over the business in Turkey, where he will be setting up his company's offices for their distribution business here in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and a few other surrounding countries. 
I was a bit (or more) shocked when he was offered the job (formally) tonight and he accepted on the spot. I guess he didn't want me to say no! 
Bad news/good news is that he starts Monday May 17th so it appears we are going to be moving SOON! 
Lots to sort out when we return but exciting times ahead.....tried to catch you all on skype tonight but no one was online.
We'll talk to you soon about this new job. Attached photo from our soon-to-be new home. I don't think we'll start attending the mosque though.
Love,
Cassie (and Scott) 
While Scott & I were barreled over in laughter while we composed this email (from my address, as everyone would have sniffed prank if it had come from Scott), this amusement did not compare to the tears of laughter we shed as we read the email responses from our family members....
Needless to say, we fooled them all (the one exception being my father who sniffed April Fool's immediately, but I guess I had to inherit the trait from someone!) and set them into a bit of a frenzy. I could not let them all (especially our mothers) be fooled for too long, so the next morning, I sent this email to the group:

Date: April 2, 2010
To: Moms, Dads, Brothers & Sister
Subject: Update: Moving Date

Just wanted to give you all the latest on our moving date which will be April 1st, 2011
Happy April Fool's Day...Turkeys!!!

Sorry to our families for fooling you, but we are still laughing just thinking about this prank!