Or is it "Celebrate good times... c'mon!" Ah hell, I never knew.
And, now, I can finally talk about it.
Much like Karla at Tales from a Texpatriate, I've been forced mum by necessity on a certain issue that has been under wraps for some time now. Namely, a surprise birthday party for my dad and his 60th birthday. Yes, we already had a mini-surprise party for him last weekend which involved shocking him with the appearance of my aunt and uncle at one of his favorite restaurants. However, this weekend was the big surprise.
The morning started with Katie and me packing some stuff in her car to head to my parents' place to help her get ready for the party under the guise that my wife was going to her knitting class to work on a project for a little while. This was at the same time that my brother and dad were heading up to pick me up so we could go to Crystal Lake to play some disc golf. Before we even went to the golf course, we went to breakfast and then stopped off at a friend's place to pick him up. By the time we finally started throwing, it was well after noon. Probably closer to one. All according to plan so far.
We then went out for some ice cream because it was a pretty hot day and then stopped at Dick's Sporting Goods to check out the prices of discs for my brother's friend, Justin, who was playing along with us. He'd never played before and enjoyed it so we shopped a bit. Everything's still flowing nicely.
Next stop was my townhome, which Justin has not seen before. However, since he was doing his own home renovations, and we had been talking about them all day, he wanted to see what we had done to our place. We were also stopping off to give him a couple of my old golf discs. Couldn't ask for a better excuse, eh?
Then we went back to my dad's house for a "family BBQ." When we opened the front door and my dad walked in, over 30 people yelled "surprise!" He was definitely shocked. He jumped back.
We managed to pull the wool over his eyes. And quite well at that. The house looked great; there was a ton of food that we, of course, had trouble pushing on people; but we all had fun. And my dad loved it.
Kudos to my mom; Katie; Justin's girlfriend, Angie; and my parents' friends for all the planning and execution. And to my brother, Justin, and me for keeping my dad in the dark all day.
