Surprise!

Saturday night, my friend Kelli and I pulled off a successful little surprise birthday party for our husbands! PD and Kelli live directly behind us in Gulf and we have been good friends! They are a treat to have as neighbors and friends. So, it was convenient that the men have birthdays together! For weeks Kelli and I have been planning this party trying to figure out how to keep it a secret and make it lots of fun.

We decided to have a guys only beer tasting party. We asked each of the guys to bring a six pack of chilled beer. They signed up for a lager, ale or stout. Kelli and I provided the donut cake (see above) and some munchy food. There was also a fire pit outside so the guys could spread out.

The guys brought some good choices (from what I heard) and our neighbors, John and Ashley, graciously donated their basement for us to use! (Kelli and I couldn't figure out how to have a successful surprise party at our houses with sleeping baby girls upstairs, so the neighbors came to our rescue!) They were the most laid back, gracious hosts I could imagine. They allowed Kelli and I to rearrange their entire basement, throw a party at their house, while Kelli and I were at home, and they didn't care that we waited til after church to clean up.

We had fun getting into the little details to try to make it special. We had 3 stations (ale, lager, stout), cute little tasting cups with the guys name and birthdays on it. A piece of paper where the guys could write the beers they liked and didn't like down. And of course I had the auburn/florida game playing (War Eagle!)

Kelli and I were so nervous all day hoping everything would work out! It did!! All day, I kept "running out to do something quick" so that I could sneak to Ashley's house and set up for the party without David noticing. Then that evening I invited Kelli and PD over to watch the Auburn game on ESPN3 (online streaming) after our babies went to bed. We hung out for 20-30 minutes. Then I went to fix a drink for PD. While I did that I sneakily unplugged our router from the phone jack. A couple minutes later, as I delivered the drink to PD, the internet went out so we couldn't see the game (!!)! As we practiced, Kelli quickly "remembered" that the John and Ashley were watching the game at their house. She texted them to "ask" if we could come over. They said yes, so we hooked up the baby monitors and went over to "watch the game" :-)

We arrived and you could not tell that 15 guys were in the basement at all, the house was quiet. Ashley greeted us and said he had the game playing downstairs. So we went down the hallway, opened the door to the basement and immediately a loud, deep voiced round of "Happy Birthday" started to be sung in the dark basement. PD and David were very hesitant to go downstairs because they thought we were interrupting something we shouldn't... They finally made it down, the donut cake was lit with candles and the guys stood in shock trying to take in their a bunch of their friends were oddly in the basement. :-) They blew out the candles, Kelli and I explained that this was a beer tasting party - a surprise for their birthday. It worked! Kelli and I stayed around for a bit to say hello, thank the guys for coming, and then we left. We heard it was lots of fun! One funny quote from David when he was still in shock - he asked his friend, "So, how did you know to be here?" haha

Happy birthday, David! I love you so much and had lots of fun celebrating you!