Alright… I’m back… Taking a quick breath from all that stuff.  I mentioned my wife’s surprise party in the fog of a blog that I posted last Thursday.  Easily the highlight of my month!  And hers too!  She loves surprises and this one worked out pretty well.

Imagine the clever people you know.  If the clever people that you know are actually clever then go ahead and lump Celestial right into that category.  (Congrats!  Now you guys are friends and stuff.  You know each other.)  This is a problem though.  Clever people are not easy to surprise.  Extra work was going to have to go into the fooling effort since this was an extra special b-day, being the big Three O.

I needed a running start at this so I began talking to my buddy Nathan about the idea for this party back in April.  We decided on some of the gist of it back then, including making it a potluck party with the theme of, “Stuff  With Cheese On It” (Celestial’s expressed favorite dish).  But since we had budget issues we had to quickly rule out the surprise trip to Paris where all her friends would be waiting at a hotel with a private show from U2.

Keeping that in the back pocket for the 40^th though.

I’m not much of a detail guy—at all—so I stuck to the fun part, which was planning how I was going to surprise her and left the party details to her best friend Jamie (she was amazing).  Jamie threw an incredible party.  My sister Amanda and her Husband Troy made a sweet journey of Celest’s life via slide show.  My friend Adam Dj’d.  He’s one cool Puerto Rican.  And all her friends did her the wonderful honor of showing up—pretty much the most important part.  And my only responsibility was getting the birthday girl there.  I totally almost choked.

Concealing the secret was the first step.  Celest never has her phone on her but she does have mine.  BECAUSE SHE STEELS IT FREQUENTLY!!!  Yeah, in addition to being able to see all the calls and texts, my emails all show up there too.  Makes secret planning a little tough.  But we designated a separate email that Jamie and I would plan from and correspond with the guests and that worked great.

We decided that the party location would be the clubhouse at my apartment complex for 3 reasons:  It is Free.  Free.  & Free.  (ok… a fourth reason being that it was the nicest free place that we could get… don’t forget my budget).  But how would I get her to casually stroll into the clubhouse on a Sunday afternoon?  We never go to the clubhouse?  Let alone on Sunday afternoons when all we want to do is nap!

But!  2 facts about Celestial:  She loves getting packages in the mail and she rarely has her phone on (oh did I mention the phone part already?).  Perfect!

This was my “IN”!

The day before the party I would call the apartment office and ask them to call Celestial’s cell phone and leave a voice message that she had a package waiting for her.  She wouldn’t get the message until the next day after I charged her phone for her and when she did she wouldn’t be able to resist waiting an extra minute to get the package which would take her right through the door way to the party.  It was perfect!

But it got complicated.

2 weeks before the party I sent out an email to let everyone know that the party plans were going great and to remind anyone who hadn’t rsvpd to get on it.  Well, much to my freaking horror, Celestial got that email!  I was sitting on the couch next to her, I looked at her computer screen and there was my email in her inbox.  I was so stinkn sad because I really wanted everything to be perfect.  She loves to be surprised and this was totally sucking it up.  If there was anything positive about it, it was that the email was completely general and the only info that she got from it was that there was a party somewhere and sometime in the future.

No worries at all!  Because I had a plan!

I had been wanting to do a fake surprise party for a while, back when I first kicked around the idea with Nathan in April.  Who doesn’t expect a surprise party on big birthdays like this?  What better way to extinguish the suspicion than to throw them a dud surprise party first.  And we succeeded at that!  I put the plans together fast and she walked into the restaurant and there was 6 people and our kids with some balloons and a present; that was her 30^th.  We made up some pretty great excuses about why everyone else couldn’t come, ate some pasta, and then we went home.  She was totally sweet about it and tried to pretend like she had fun.

The next day was her party and it totally ended up amazing.  She got the call from the office just like we planned.  And, just like I told you, she insisted on getting the package immediately.  She practically drug me to her own surprise.  Effortless!  She was so surprised and loved it all.  Oh, and after she got totally rocked by everybody’s surprise for her, we ended the party by giving her a 3 night trip for her and me and no kids that a bunch of people at the party contributed to as their gift to her.  We ended up doing a photography road trip from Tahoe to Idaho to Oregon and back down through Shasta and then home.  Totally good times!  The whole thing came together way better than I could have imagined it.  She totally loved it.

So there it is.  Now it’s to you.  Tell us about your best surprise memory.  We’d love to hear it.