Surprise! That was the word that I hoped I could successfully utter today. Today is my wife's birthday, yes... two days before Christmas Eve. Due to this fact, she has always mentioned how uneventful her birthdays were growing up, typically with her family just letting her take a pick at a gift already under the Christmas tree. This to me is totally a wrong approach! Birthdays need to be special and completely separate from any other day, with the day spent making lasting memories and doing something unique that makes a person feel special and important (even if that means annoying them). Past readers should remember my passion for birthday celebrations...For the past several months.. I knew exactly what I wanted to do to celebrate Dawn's birthday this year.. something that I had toyed with doing for the past several years, but never had the time, resources, or finances to pull off: I wanted to throw her a surprise birthday party.... the stereotypical kind where by some means, the birthday girl ends up in a dark room and all her friend pop out of no where to scream Surprise!
So that was the idea... Now.. planning how to pull this off with my ever observant, logical wife, was the tricky part. I suddenly had to get very good at lying and inventing stories off the top of my head.. all for a good purpose, of course!
So with the DVDs done and out of the way, I was finally able to put on my "Evil Calvin Grin", rub my hands together in a scheming way and begin to brainstorm the details. First, I needed a location and that came fairly easy as our friend. the one friend that would happen to be the one that would be "taking her to lunch" that afternoon, happened to own a little cafe in our town. She volunteered the space and we coordinated a date and time and suddenly the party was on.
It was shortly thereafter that I made an interesting observation: I have attended many partiies, both as an invited guest and as hired DJ, but never in my life have I PLANNED a party... been the instigator.. the Inviter. Suddenly I had to learn all the little details that goes into planning such an event: How many are invited, how many will actually attend, mailing invites, planning and coordinating with catering, entertainment, music, decorations, etc. What started as a very simple idea.... as most of mine do... suddenly turned into a giant, time consuming monster. Luckily, I had some good resources in my accomplices.. my partners in crime.. all of us plotting together as to how to really pull this off.
Finally, today arrived. The morning began by my lying that I "Had to go into town to do some last minute shopping, as my work week had been crazy and I hadn't had a chance to go yet". Yea right... Partially true... I hadn't been Christmas shopping during my lunch hours.. I had been birthday party planning. But my Christmas shopping had been done for some time. This seemed perfectly reasonable to her, knowing that I am a notorious procrastinator, so off I went to decorate the cafe.
As it turns out I went with a tropical theme, combining a Hawaiian and Caribbean tropical party into one. And so there I was in the morning, hanging tiki walls, lights, tropical masks, and decorating with lots of bright colors. As the restaurant was completely covered in Christmas decorations, I had to accept a fair amount of Christmas carry over, otherwise I'd be taking down a lot of large scaled items! When Dawn left for "Lunch" that afternoon, Little Calvin and I threw on our Hawaiian shirts and headed over to pick up food and cake.
Soon enough, everything was in place, guests were arriving and mingling and the place was starting to fill up. I found it very odd being a "host" trying to greet everyone and spend time with all of our friends simultaneously. Soon, I got the signal that she was close and everyone headed upstairs to the balcony that surrounded the cafe. As Dawn arrived, the cafe was dark, and appeared empty and quiet. It wasn't until she wandered halfway into the room that we all startled her with our "Surprise!" yell.
Now, was she totally surprised? Not really. She figured out during lunch that this would be a perfect set up for a surprise party and so she began to look for the signs that she felt might come. As she and her friend headed home and her friend said "Oh, I need to swing by the Cafe to pick up some things", she quickly added another mental check to her list. And finally, when she arrived at the cafe and was told to "just come in for a second while I grab some things" instead of the typical "wait here in the car while I grab something" she was pretty sure she had me figured out.. which she did.
But we all enjoyed ourselves. Good food, good company with a selection of people from all aspects of life: work, neighbors, church friends and volleyball coaches. She was surprised to find all the tropical touches... the birthday cake written in Hawaiian, the steel drummed background music, and we all had a good time playing "Apples to Apples": a game that I bought almost randomly not realizing it is an uber-popular party game that is selling out like crazy all over the country. I can see why... we had a ball and laughed our heads off.
Now, I just need to figure out what kind of crazy idea to pull off next year!! Bw ha ha! [gets evil Calvin scheming grin and slouches away. rubbing hands together]
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