HAPPY 60th MOM!

Can you believe it? 2 days in a row! I promised more updates, and here they come...

On May 9, my mom celebrated her 60th birthday - HAPPY 60th DONNA MARIE!!! :-) We had some surprises up our sleeve for her, and they actually worked. It's not too easy surprising my mother, but we managed to do it in a couple big ways. Woohoo!

The first of the surprises came on Wednesday of the birthday week. Mom has wanted new furniture for quite some time, so Dad and Bill picked up the couch she looked at, and had it in the living room (with some help from Terry - see, these birthday surprises take a lot of participants!) when mom and I came home from taking the doggies to Petco. I think she may have had an inkling on this little surprise, but she played it off well and was too thrilled with her new sofa!

Birthday surprise #2 came on Thursday. Sharon (my sister), Dan and the boys traveled from PA on a stealth mission for the birthday festivities. This just fell into place perfectly. I worked all day (as did my dad), so mom asked me if I wanted to stay and watch some finale shows after work. I did. Dad got home a little before 9, which was perfect - they were just a few minutes away. When my dad came in, he mentioned that the neighbor was gonna stop by in a few minutes. So, when Sharon rang the doorbell, Mom just says really casually, "come on in..." Then we watched her complete confusion as she tried to figure out why my sister and her clan were walking through the door. I regret that I did not capture my mother's face on camera that night - priceless!

Third on our list of surprises was a party on her actual birthday - Saturday! Terry and Kathy agreed to host the party at their house, and we invited a hanful of my parents' friends and operation party was underway. Mom loves wedding cake, so I found a local bakery that received rave reviews from local brides, and I ordered her birthday cake. I looked at tons of pictures and with the help of the gal at the shop, I chose a style they had done before, but we changed the colors on the cake to white with some red accents (very different than the blue with brown accents as shown in the picture!)
The family had planned to go out to an early dinner at JackStack, and then end up over at the Wilkes' house. I ran around getting the party stuff together on Saturday - Kathy helped me set up things at the house and it was lookin' good.

We hadn't quite decided how to get mom to the Wilkes after dinner, but I was thinking I would tell her that the cake was messed up and Kathy offered to pick it up for me. As luck would have it, this wasn't hard to pull off! I couldn't pick up the cake until after 3, which was a snafu too - we were actually supposed to pick it up Friday, and since I was working, Terry attempted to pick it up...only to be told that they wouldn't have it ready till Sat. When I arrived at the bakery, I was excited to see the finished product. There were two gals working, (neither of which were the ones I ordered it from) so one of the gals brought out the cake - opened the box - and....well....it wasn't the right cake. It was BLUE and BROWN! How can I take a blue and brown cake when my mom hates blue, and the whole party is based around her favorite color - Red! Um, this isn't gonna work. After several phone calls and apologies, the bakery told me that they could strip down the cake and re-decorate it - and, Terry and Kathy would go pick it up. Aaaaghhh! So, see...we didn't have to lie after all!

When I got over to the folks house, I told everyone about the cake - it fell right into place. We had a great dinner, and then Bill entertained us all by driving around downtown...taking the longest route possible to get home. Oh, I almost forgot - while we were eating, mom said "did you invite Terry and Kathy to have cake with us?" Um, well...sure, that's a great idea. So the hoax was set. We arrived at the Wilkes and when mom walked in and saw all the decorations, she thought Kathy had done that just for her - then everyone popped out and shouted, "surprise! happy birthday!" She was really surprised. And, we had a fantastic time celebrating with friends and family!

HAPPY 60th BIRTHDAY, MOM!!!!

(more pics on facebook album)