My baby brother Daniel turned 30 on November 17th.  He was very excited for his birthday (as he is every year) and began planning his “surprise” party a couple months in advance (as he does every year).  Without fail, Daniel plans the location, time, menu, food assignments, and gifts and gives every family member a 3X5 card with their assignments several weeks in advance (every year). 

This year we thought we would actually try to suprise him by throwing a real suprise party the Sunday before his birthday as we already had family plans for the adults to go to dinner on the 17th.  Daniel had previously mentioned a get together at my cousin Tanya’s home with as many relatives as he could muster.  We have seen many distant relatives lately due to, well, sad circumstances, so inviting them for a happy celebration made sense.  And anyway, who doesn’t love Daniel?

With a couple of emails and assignments drawn up by my sister and I (undetected by Daniel) the party was set.  Sunday evening at Tanya’s house, gifts of 30 things, cake, ice cream, punch, appetizers, fun.  While at church on Sunday my mom gave Daniel a note that said they were going to go for a drive around 6:00 that evening.  Daniel’s shy smiled appeared as he asked where they were going.  To my mother’s reply of “it’s a surprise” Daniel’s wheels started turning.

While everyone arrived, mom and a blindfolded Daniel sat outside in the car.  When it was time for the guest of honor to enter, he asked mom when he could take of the blindfold so he could walk up to 2 or 3 steps to Tanya’s door.  Who did we think we were fooling?  He knew it all along, but that did not damper the excitement of the evening.  He was thrilled!

We counted about 65 people in attendance which in turn lead to lots of presents!  Some examples of presents are:  30 soda cans, 30 fun size m&m’s, 30 gold $1 coins, 30 $2 bills, 30 ties, 30 bags of snack size chips, 30 christmas songs on CD, and many more.  All in all the party was a success.  Here is a little viewing pleasure of the moment he arrived…