2 . One year my children came home from school asking where we were going on summer vacation. It seemed that all the other kids were________ where they were spending the summer. I couldn’t ______to take them anywhere but I didn’t want to tell them that so I just said, “It’s a surprise!” They were delighted. That bought me a little more time.

I called several amusement parks to see if there was a half-price event during the summer but no such ______ . I tried everything, with no success, so I called some of the other moms to find that most were in the same situation that I was. We decided to ______something fun for our kids to do. We had a meeting, all five of us, and created what is now called a “playcation”.

One mother was a ______ , so on Mondays the kids would all go to her house. They would play games using plants and vegetables. They also planted vegetables and watch them grow over the summer.

Another mother had Bible______on Tuesdays. She asked some questions about Bible. The kid who answered correctly got a penny, which they all turned in at the end to buy their goodie bags.

At our house on Wednesdays, I made an outdoor_______training with my spare tires. The kids also walked a balance beam and raced through large cardboard boxes taped together.

On______they had arts and crafts across the street. Fridays were hosted by a wonderful single dad with a metal detector who took everyone out treasure______ .

The summer was a big success. Okay, it wasn’t Disney World, ______the kids didn’t miss anything. My son actually asked me, “Can we do this again next year?”

3 . When my father was celebrating a milestone birthday, I pulled together a surprise gift treat he would never forget.

As he was _________ 60, I had a fun idea: What if I could get the _________ people had of him, put each one into an envelope—60 in total—and have him open them, one by one, on his birthday? So I wrote an e-mail to family and friends, _________my idea.

I sent the e-mail and waited. And then the _________ started coming in and I was very, very_________. There were so many memories, and they were all so lovely. They came from the 50s, 60s, 70s, from every decade (十年) between now and the day my dad was _________. They came from my mother, my siblings, my grandma, my dad’s friends from high school, his sister, my dad’s first boss, a colleague at his first _________, from people who hadn’t seen my dad in 40 years, from people I myself hadn’t even informed. They _________ them and handwrote them. They mailed them and e-mailed them.

The night before Dad's birthday, my sister and I _________ up late, putting everything together with some __________ . The next morning, after breakfast and __________ and cake, we gave the pile of envelopes to him. "Just one more thing for you,” we said.

It took him a long time to open them and __________. Each one was a brief ticket to another time, a leap backward over years and decades. There was a lot of laughter and a few__________, too.

I was kind of __________ when the project was over because it was great fun to collect these memories. It gave me a different __________ of dad.