Brian's Surprise 30th!

The last two months of planning...totally worth it! Our good friend Brian turned THIRTY this past Wednesday and we had one heck of a celebration. Every year Brian gives me "the talk" about not doing anything big for his birthday. Each year I have abided by his orders and done a small dinner at our house. Well I was NOT letting 30 just slip by under the radar. About 2 months ago I called his mom to get some ideas for days (i.e celebrate on his actual birthday - a weeknight - or wait until the weekend). I invited her and Pete but they said they probably weren't going to be able to make it. She did, however, send some GREAT baby pics of Brian. Through a few of his key friends that I knew - we gathered a robust list of all of Brian's close friends. I have to say he has the sweetest friends. I had not met all of them before, but they were great people - and all SOOO excited to pitch in and surprise Brian.

The invites went out and we were set to have everyone meet at our house at 6pm Wednesday night. A week before we were set to party Brian sends me a text that "he needs to talk about dinner Wednesday." I called him and told myself to "play it cool." He proceeds to tell me that he has an HOA meeting that night and he will be late to dinner. A few emails later we are all pushed back to 6:30. In the months leading up to the big night I collected pictures from all of his friends and made a shutterfly book titled "thirty...reasons we love you." I left 2 white pages at the back for everyone to sign "a reason they love Brian during the 45 minutes we were all waiting for him.

The Dessert Table (Brian is a huge scrabble fan)...

....and Skittles!

Sweet tea, regular tea, lemonade (Arnold Palmers), lemons, water, beer and wine

Everyone hiding! Huge Success!!!

7:00pm comes arounds - no Brian. 7:05...still no Brian. Having never thrown a surprise party before I was getting very anxious. 7:20 he shows up...TOTALLY surprised. It was so much fun to see his reaction. He couldn't believe the group of friends we had gotten together. Thinking the night has peaked I hear a knock at the door...opening it to Brian's mom and dad! They surprised all of us. SO FUN! Brian couldn't believe it.

I printed out the baby pictures his mom sent and pasted them onto big foam boards for everyone to write a caption. Some of them were so funny I couldn't even read all of them outloud I was laughing so hard. 

Signing the book while waiting for Brian

Brian read each page outloud!