Surprise! [Surprise!]

Surprise....

The week before last, Peter turned the big three-oh. In typical Tuesday fashion, he had to work all day and then head straight to class till late in the evening on his actual birthday (with little chance of even seeing the kids). So we had a hasty celebration Monday night before the kids' bedtime with a little cake and a few presents.

The big "gift" was a joint 30th Birthday-Valentine's Day trip ski trip to Vail. Which was fabulous, I might add.

But 30 is a pretty big deal (at least the biggest we'll see for the next decade), and I couldn't just leave it at that. So I schemed up a good ole' fashioned surprise party.

Peter's mom put together this awesome photo
album for his birthday!

Contacting Peter's friends proved a bit of a challenge; I looked up one of Peter's friends from grad school who I knew was on Facebook, and asked him to send a bat signal out to the rest of the grad school friends. When talking to Peter, I casually tried to work in questions about the people at work and in his army reserve unit to find out the name of another good friend, because I'm horrible with names. Then hacked into his email to try and find corresponding email addresses. My shining moment was digging through his army briefcase to find his unit alert roster (contact list with personal info) because I knew if nothing else, it should have the info I needed. Perks of having been in the army, I suppose.

To get him out of the house, I had the big kids give him "dad-kid date movie tickets" as a gift on his actual birthday...so that he would take them to the movies on the day of the surprise party and I would have my husband and two chatty kids out of the way (I didn't trust them for a second to keep the secret). I was pretty proud of myself for that one. While they were at the theater watching Frozen, I was busy running around with Ethan: ordering the food, picking up the cake, cluelessly wandering around the liquor store with my toddler lunging at alcoholic goodies until I  gave up and asked where I could find the largest bottled pack of Peter's favorite beer, and preparing games for our Minute to Win It theme. Peter had always wanted to do a Minute to Win It game night so I thought this was the perfect chance!

And finally, after a month of scheming and sleuthing, we pulled it off!

The games were a hit...

"In Your Face" - in which you have 60
seconds to get a cookie from your
forehead down to the hatch...
no hands allowed.

The cake was awesome...

It's not a real party until
you eat your head.

...and it was a really fun night just hanging out with friends and staying up way past our "old person" bedtime. 

It'll likely be the only surprise party I ever get to throw for Peter since he's way too good at catching onto things and likes to be the one behind the surprises. So I'm glad we made it happen for his 30th, and that it was as well-received as it was deserved!

-----      -----      -----

...and SURPRISE!!!

Speaking of...

The night before the party, I got a small shock of my own.

After another long week of busy schedules and school and not seeing each other, we finally got some time to crash on the couch, catch up on all the important stuff we're too tired to discuss during the week, and watch some Olympics and Downton Abbey.

Right before bed, I went to plug in my dying phone and saw this sitting on my computer:

Background: in a few short weeks here, Peter will earn his long-awaited MBA after two greuling years of going to grad school at night while holding down a full-time day job plus a weekend Army Reserves gig.

So what did he do? Write me this super-thoughtful thank-you note about all the sacrifices on my end (while he was the one to do all the work), which made me cry, of course...

Thanking me for "160 hubby-less nights,
hundreds and hundreds of study hours, and
unpredictable schedules" among other things,
ending with "here's your reward!"

 ...and then he surprised me with THIS folded up inside, which I thought at first glance was just a continuation of his long list of thank-yous, or at best a coupon for a massage or something.

Nope. Not a massage. He's just whisking me away for a little getaway to Coronado Beach is all.

The best part is that his parents knew about both the party and the trip, and got to keep the secret from both of us; they proved to be fabulous secret-keepers--just like Mrs. Hughes, for all you Downton fans out there.

Clearly we were both having way too much fun plotting for our weekend full of surprises--we certainly are made for each other, aren't we?!