Suprise!

Liz turned 30 this year, so I decided that I better throw her a party for this joyous occasion. If you know Liz, you know that she doesn’t like surprises and she’s pretty good at finding out surprises. Needless to say, keeping a secret from her was quite a challenge.

Seriously I really wanted to do something very special for her; she is such a blessing to our family and friends.

So here was the plan:

First I had to figure out a way that I could keep her out of the house for the entire day. What I decided to do was to give her an all day shopping certificate with me at Great Lakes Crossings. This would keep her focused on shopping and not on any anomalies that may arise.

Second, Molly (her youngest sister) would watch our kids all day for her. What Liz didn’t know was that not only would Molly watch the kids but she, the kids and Liz’s sister would clean and prep the house for the surprise party.

Lastly, in order to get Liz to come home at the exact time I needed her too, I told her (while shopping) that I wanted to surprise her and take her to a really nice restaurant, which would require us to go home and change and be home at 6:00.

Here is what actually happened:

We left early for shopping; Liz wanted to take full advantage of “The day of shopping”. Liz had no idea what was taking place at home while we were shopping. Molly and kids did a tremendous job getting things ready and more importantly cleaning the house (Liz does not like to have people over when the house is ‘messy’).

We shopped and shopped and shopped and surprisingly Liz was all done early. I was so worried that I would have to drag Liz out of the mall ‘kicking and screaming’ but never thought in a million years that she would be ready to go home two hours earlier than planned. Well, I obviously couldn’t let her go home this early so I had to stall. I had to bribe her with more money. This worked only for a little while; Liz was tiring and was ready to go home. I had to think quickly on my feet, so I told her that I needed to go to Best Buy for ‘work’. Well, this seems to work we left Great Lakes Crossing around 5:15 and it takes about an hour to get home. The party was supposed to start at 6:00.

I invited quite a few of Liz’s family and friends, over 40 to be exact. Nevertheless, I told Molly that I wanted everyone to wait in the back yard and I would find a reason for her to go out to the backyard. Much to my surprise over 30 women could be quite ;) at the same time and what a surprise to Liz. When she opened the back door and saw all her friends and family just sitting quietly.

SURPRISE!

One funny thing is that when Liz opened the door and saw all the people, she shut the door and said to me “you better have had a ‘Molly-Maid’ clean the house”. She is so funny isn’t she?

Anyway, thanks so much for all the people that helped and came to celebrate Liz’s 30th birthday. I’m sure that Liz will never forget this birthday.