BULVERDE, Texas – A pair of Rahe Bulverde Elementary School sisters were shocked Wednesday after their father made a surprise visit to their school.
Stacy Sprowls recently finished a six-month deployment to Kyrgyzstan and wanted to make his homecoming special for his 8-year-old daughter, Maykayla, and her 6-year-old sister, Kaylee.
"The last time they came and surprised me, (they) met me at the airport," Sprowls said. "This time I wanted to surprise them, put them in shock."
Under the guise of a National Library Week assembly, the two sisters sat side-by-side in the school's library.
As they spoke to a teacher, their dad snuck up behind them and gave them both a hug and a stuffed animal.
Maykayla's jaw dropped and she said, "Daddy?"
Sprowls hugged his daughter and asked, "Did you miss me?"
After a few shy moment's, first-grader Kaylee finally gave her dad the first of the 10,000 hugs she promised him upon his return.
The reaction to the homecoming was somewhat subdued, which Sprowls said he expected.
"I've seen lots of the different videos and seen kid reacts both ways: Either they talk a lot or they don't talk," he said. "It's one extreme or the other so it didn't surprise me."