On Saturday I finally got a chance to go shopping, I picked up a few presents for birthdays that I know are coming up and I started my shopping for Independence Day that is coming up on Friday, July 4, 2008.

The children were gone on a trip that they had planned a while ago with a few of their friends, so my husband and I had a chance to spend some time alone for a change.

We actually had a chance to go out to breakfast together (something that we don’t get to do too often) take a long walk, take in a movie and we had a chance to relax just a little bit for a change.

We thought we were going to be able to have the whole day to ourselves, but N-o-o-o, that would have been too easy and just could not happen. As luck would have it, we had friends from out of town to show up at our door out of the blue to surprise us.

Well, that ended our short get away time.

We ended up having a great time with our friends, talking and catching up on what had been going on with them since we last saw one another and catching up on what had been going on with a lot of other mutual friends that we have.

We took them out to tour the city and to do some shopping and sight seeing and we treated them to dinner as well.

Overall it was a very good day, but the best was yet to come.

Since it was Saturday, they wanted to see what it was like to play a lottery ticket. They had come such a long way and the lottery drawing was the same night. I don’t usually play the lottery but I decided to play just for the fun of it.

They purchased the regular lottery tickets, and I, (being the odd, curious and adventurous one), purchased five $1 scratch-off tickets.

Later, when we got back home, we continued to talk and catch up on all the things that had been going on and we started making plans for things that we know are coming up.

Later, my friend, who is always calling me the lucky one, was more anxious than I was for me to scratch off the tickets that I had purchased. So, I started to scratch them off.

I purchased 3 different kinds of tickets and there were multiple ways to win on each one.

After I had scratched off the first 2, I asked her if she wanted to scratch off the rest of them. She said yes, so I gave them to her to scratch off for me and I left the room.

I didn’t think anything else about it, so after I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, I asked them to excuse me for a moment while I went to my bedroom to change clothes.

Before I could finish changing clothes, I heard a lot of commotion going on and then I heard her and her husband start to laugh. It was a good hearty laugh and I had no clue as to what they were laughing about.

I heard them call my husband’s name. They were all talking and the next thing I knew, I heard my husband say W-H-A-T? You have got to be kidding me. He then started to laugh as well.

I finished changing clothes and went back out to see what was going on.

They all just looked at me, shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders and chuckled. Then my friend smiled and said, “You did it again. You always do it. I don’t know how, but you always do.”

I didn’t know what in the world she was talking about so I said “I always do what–What did I do?”

Then the three of them said, “You won on one of your scratch off tickets.”

I didn’t think too much about it because people are always winning a few dollars here and there on the scratch off tickets, so I said “Oh, I did? What did I win?

She then said “What did you win? Look at this ticket!” She then handed me the ticket.

I looked at the ticket and at first I didn’t understand what all of the fuss was about because I didn’t see anything too spectacular about the ticket, and I certainly didn’t see anything on it that matched.

T-H-E-N, I read the explanation of what everything meant on the ticket.

You see nothing matched on the ticket because on that particular ticket nothing had to match. It was one of those tickets that paid off if you found a certain symbol on the ticket and there were only 5 of those tickets printed out of tens of thousands of tickets.

Can you imagine my surprise when I found out that I had purchased one of the 5 lucky tickets that paid $1000! I was floored and totally shocked.

At the start of the day, my husband and I had planned to spend a quiet day and evening together and weren’t planning to go back out for the rest of the day once we got back home from the movies. Boy, am I glad that we did.

So, even though there are times when you want to have a day to yourself, don’t get upset when you have guests that drop in on you unannounced. It just might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Oh, by the way, in case you are wondering, they weren’t as lucky and none of them won anything in the Big lottery.

Regards,

Angela