Lantern Time Already?

Every October for the past five years my community has entered the Mount Holly Lantern Parade. The theme for this year was announced at the end of last year's parade, and it is "The Wide World of Sports". I'm not going to lie, none of us are excited about this theme. Our goal is always to have something that engages the children along the parade route, as well as having enough lanterns for the many residents in our community who want to walk in the parade with us.

We really struggled with coming up with something that would be fun for us to work on. We actually considered not participating this year. But finally we came up with an idea that we thought would work for us. I doubt that any of our competitors read this blog, but nevertheless I will keep what we are doing a surprise. It encompasses many sports, so I think that will appeal to a lot of people.

We have begun deconstruction of our larger lanterns from last year. We repurpose the interior framing and light packs when we can. I took one last picture of all the sharks together for posterity's sake.

Baby Shark & family

Speaking of surprises, my husband will be turning 70 this year. I had planned a surprise trip for him, setting up an activity that he really enjoys. I have kept the secret, and all he knew was that he would need his passport, and to dress for warm weather. But yesterday, the group that I organized the trip through sent out an email to HIM and not to me. They were aware that this was a gift for Jim and were told not to contact him. So much for the surprise!!!

I am really aggravated about it, and am trying to get over it. They have yet to reach out to me to apologize for their error. But I don't want our trip to start out on the wrong foot, so I'll need to be gracious about it. Jim is excited about where we are going, so in the end that is all that matters.

Because You Only Turn 60 Once

Jim's cookie cake

Since January I had been keeping a secret from my husband. That was extremely difficult for me. I didn't tell anyone else about it because we have had family surprises ruined in the past by loose lips. Our son and daughter-in-law had booked tickets to St. Louis to surprise Jim for his 60th birthday, much like they had surprised me in New York when we were there celebrating my launch into a new decade. Jim's birthday is March 2nd, and the kids were not flying in until close to midnight that night. I had earlier suggested to Jim that we celebrate his birthday over the weekend since we had just gotten back from our cruise and visiting Katie in LA. He was totally fine with that idea.

SWT Design took him out to lunch on the 2nd, and invited me to come along. They also had a pretty awesome cookie cake made for him, so I didn't feel too bad about not having cake on his actual birthday. The next morning I picked up Andy and Megan at the hotel where they had spent the night since they were flying in so late. I couldn't figure out how I was going to sneak out of the house at 11:30 at night to get them without arising his suspicion, so they decided to go the hotel route. We drove directly to his office and surprised him there. And was he ever shocked! He had no idea the planning that went on behind his back. Tee, hee! We took him to a new restaurant, The Slider House in Rock Hill, for lunch and then dropped him back off at the office.

He was able to take a few hours off over the next couple of days, and we had a really nice visit with the kids. Friday night we took him to Citizen Kane's for the real celebration, and then had cake and ice cream back at the house where he could finally open his gifts.

Jim's 60th birthday

On Saturday, Megan's mom and dad drove over from Indiana. We always have such a good time with them! We are so blessed to not only have a daughter-in-law whom we love, but one who comes from such a fabulous family as well. We chatted and ate pizza, and then brought out the card games. We broke long enough to enjoy the meal Jim and I prepared, and then jumped right back into a hot game of Sequence. One game led to another, and we finally called it quits at 1:00 in the morning. As the kids had an early flight the next morning, we thought it prudent to head off to bed at that point.

Six o'clock a.m. came way too early Sunday, and before we knew it everyone was taking off for home. I think I am safe in saying that we made turning 60 pretty memorable for Jim!

Pulling off the Surprise

Andy had been talking about coming home for a weekend this summer, hoping to coordinate his schedule with that of a Cardinals home game. After bouncing around some dates, he emailed me one night suggesting that he fly home for Father's Day weekend as a surprise for his dad. What did I think? And oh, by the way, did we have Cardinal tickets for that weekend? I told Andy that Jim and I were going to see "Wicked" Friday night (which was totally awesome, by the way) and he said that was fine since he didn't get into St. Louis until 8:00 and he would just have Katie come and pick him up. Okay, on to issue 2 - ball tickets. I called Jim's partner who advised that the only tickets they had for this weekend was Friday night. Well, that wasn't going to work. Our season tickets are shared by 3 different groups, and then we further split our group of tickets with an architectural firm. I called our friend Pat from the architectural office, and he said they didn't have the tickets for that weekend either. But Pat said he knows a lot of people with season tickets, and he would put out some feelers for me. I told him even if he could only get 2 seats, I would take them. He came through for me with 2 seats in the 5th row behind the Cardinal dugout. Nice! These are even a little closer than our own season tickets, which are great seats.

So now 5 people know of the surprise, but we told no one else. Loose lips sink ships, as I found out when Jim's sister spilled the beans regarding a surprise 40th birthday party I had put together some years back. Now all I needed to do was make sure Jim didn't have a motorcycle trip planned for this weekend. I was concerned because it had been 2 weeks since he was last able to ride, so I knew he would be antsy. The last I had heard he was just going to get together over breakfast with a small group of riders who are heading for a week long trip to Wisconsin next month. That would work just fine.

But then yesterday he drops on me that he is getting up at 5:30 on Saturday to meet his buddy and they were riding down to St. Genevieve to pick up another rider and head out for the day. Drats! Oh well, once he learned Andy was in town he could decide if he still wanted to go. When we got home from "Wicked" about 11:30, Andy popped into the kitchen from around the corner and Jim was dumbstruck. At first he thought Katie had a male friend over, and then it sunk in. He was quite surprised, so we pulled it off. Yay!

We didn't get to bed until 1:00 since we were catching up with Andy. He and Megan have not been here since Christmas, so there was a lot to discuss. The 5:30 alarm was pretty ugly this morning. As it ended up it was raining out, so they canceled the ride. At 7:00 the alarm company called to advise that the power was off at the composting facility. At that point, I decided to just get up. The rest of my family managed to sleep until after 9:00, the bums.

So now the guys are at the game, Katie is off to Jake's birthday party, and I have the house to myself. It just might be time for a bubble bath. Ahhhhhh....