Daniel's birthday extravaganza

It's no secret I'm a sucker for birthdays, particularly the milestone ones, as I stated in my last post. Plus I love surprises.....I am, admittedly, much better at giving than receiving them. :) Last week I wrote my Thankful Thursday post wishing Daniel a happy 30th, but have not yet revealed all the details surrounding his big day. Thursday morning I woke up at 5:30 to decorate the house before Daniel woke up; I almost did this the night before but Daniel is not a morning person at all and I knew this was a sure thing. Wrong. After I fed Maggie, Will woke up and they both decided to make lots of noise which actually woke Daniel up! He normally sleeps like a log. Arggg....I'm maybe 30 minutes into decorating and shushing the kids when I hear him yell "it's okay, I'm awake." Not quite how I envisioned the morning going but he was still happy to see all the decorations when he came downstairs. The living room, kitchen and computer room were covered in balloons, streamers and hanging decorations in black and blue (D's favorite colors). I wanted to make some decorations with my new Cricut but time did not allow.

I had many variations of how I wanted to pull off his birthday and ensuing weekends such as having the house decorated and his cake and present ready when he got home from work. But then I thought, what fun is that to be at work all day and only enjoy your birthday for a couple hours when you get home? That's when I decided to pick up the balloons Wednesday evening (thank God Daniel never goes in Maggie's closet) and get up early Thursday to decorate. I didn't have his gift on the table waiting when he woke up, mostly because it was hidden in our closet and I couldn't sneak it down but also because I did still plan to give that to him in the evening with his cake. But I got too excited and had to give it to him that morning. We met Daniel at Newk's for a birthday lunch then had some banana pudding when he got home.
There were two parts to his gift: 1. A Nook Color and 2. A LAN party. Mostly I was about to bust about the LAN party because I've been keeping in a secret since January when I contacted everyone. I should've thought to wrap them separately so he'd have one in the morning and one after work but alas.

 the card from the kids gave a monster-size hug :)

 wait, what is this, how did you pull this off?

I was going to send this invitation to all the guys, but didn't get anyone's address so I just printed one off for Daniel to open.

 I forgot to take a picture of the "cake" before

putting candles in it. Banana pudding...D's fav

Memorial Day weekend was full of surprises for Daniel as well. On top of the LAN party I really wanted to do a surprise party for Daniel but was having trouble with the logistics. His Granny likes to make birthday dinners and we're rarely in town for Memorial Day (usually when we go on vaca) so I talked to Granny about it and she was happy to do it Sunday after church. A birthday lunch at Granny's would be difficult as a surprise because this is a tradition. I did, however, leave out the fact that his dad and stepmom were attending that way he had a little surprise. Our families get along really well but I didn't want to leave all that work or expense on Granny for my husband's birthday so I decided to do a little party with my family as well.

Daniel left Saturday morning to workout with his brother and I went shopping for the food and baked the cake. I didn't think I could get everything together before he returned from working out but I sure was trying. I hoped he would hang at his brother's house afterward to give me some time. He did in fact decide to play some games with Edward but stopped by my parents' in between to change and pick up some controllers. He got back when I was in the middle of rolling the cake pops so my mom, sister-in-law and I were scrambling to get the evidence out of the kitchen. Mom and Becca rounded the corner just as he walked through the back door. Whew. He still knew something was up and asked who the strawberry cake was for.....I lied. Shame on me. I asked what time he was returning and he replied, "is there something I need to be back here for?" *Sigh. Since he was on to me, I decided NOT to surprise him when he returned from his brother's, at this point, him returning to no surprise would be more of a surprise. I finished the cake pops while he was at Edward's and they took for-e-ver (but they were delicious and everyone ate them up). So I texted him when we were having dinner if  he wanted to join us and he was back right on time. After we ate and cleaned up, he went upstairs for awhile and I quickly got out a few decorations, the cake pops, and everyone's gifts....we waited in the kitchen for him. My parents' friends happened to stop by- which made my earlier lie come true- so they came inside as well and when Daniel came down the stairs, surprise! He told me later he was surprised there was no party when he got back from Edward's. I got him. :) Sorta.

As I mentioned earlier, we went to Granny and Paw Paw's Sunday for lunch. I texted his dad Sunday morning to see what time they planned to arrive. Noon. Okay, gotta get Daniel there before that. Well, he was being kinda slow and when we left Donny texted that they were close so they took a long way so we could arrive first. When Donny & Pam walked in Daniel didn't even act surprised! He said he first noticed them when he was in the hallway so I didn't see his expression. He was happy to share the day with them.  Lunch was steak and baked potatoes, salad, fruit, veggies, rolls, macaroni and banana pudding (yes, he likes it that much) and boy were we stuffed! It was a nice time eating and visiting with everyone, I know Daniel had a good time. We didn't get to stay as long as we would've liked because he wanted to catch a matinee of Kung Fu Panda 2. This came out on Daniel's birthday and we thought about going, but the kids just weren't in the mood and we didn't want to deal with it. There's a 1 hour window at the theatre there where tickets are $5 each and that's when we wanted to go! The movie was very good....I stood in the entry way behind the partition wall for the last part b/c Maggie was getting fidgety but I still saw or at least heard most of it. Daniel loved the movie and it was a great way to end his birthday weekend, plus it's really cute that Maggie's first movie is Kung Fu Panda 2 because Will's first was Kung Fu Panda. :) I didn't take any pictures at the theatre, but we all know how these things work.