Surprise

For months, my siblings and I have been planning a surprise party for my mom's 70th birthday. We really wanted her to feel celebrated, loved, and greatly appreciated for the excellent mother that she is!

We decided to hold my mom's party at my house, which added a lot of stress on me the day of the party. It was the one day that I did not enjoy living so close to my parents and for having an attentive mother that looks down my street to see what I am up to every time she goes out. Usually I love the moments when she decides to pop in for an impromptu visit, but on Friday, this was my greatest fear! In fact, it was the potential that she would do one of the above that had my brother, Jeff, have to hurry along his way when he stopped off at my house hours before the party. He was just too stressed about the possibilities of her stopping by.

Besides the stress of blowing the surprise just hours before the party, everything went perfectly! We had invited my uncle Bruce and aunt Ann to come from Utah for the party and they made it into town a couple of hours early. My visiting teacher, Mindy Stout, and my niece, Shaina, volunteered to help me with the last minute cleaning. They were amazing and took a lot of pressure off of me!

My sister, brother-in-law and nephew then came and moved my furniture out and tables and chairs in. As soon as that was complete, my niece Shaundel and cousin, Danielle Wheeler, came to help put up decorations. My brothers were in charge of food, so they came an hour early to set up the food on the island.

As soon as everyone had arrived and we had my nephew, Michael, on skipe, I called my mom to lure her to my home. Earlier in the day, I had told her that I was watching Jeff's kids that evening. My dad had told my mom that he was going to take her out to dinner, which is their normal Friday night routine. I asked her what she was doing and if she had a few minutes to stop by to see that dance that I had taught Jaimee. I knew that she wouldn't be able to resist coming to see one of Jaimee's new tricks and it worked like a charm. She was at my home in a few minutes flat, ready to see miss Jaimee.

My mom walked right in once at my house and was completely surprised by the lights being flicked on and 40 people screaming surprise at her. As you can see from the pictures, it was a joyful surprise, only to be topped off with my aunt and uncle showing up in the group of well wishers.

I had to include this picture of Jaimee hugging her grandma. She was so excited by all the hype of the party. She had learned how to say Happy Birthday and quietly said it to grandma just after this picture was taken.

This is a picture of the group that gathered around the computer to talk with Michael, who recently moved to Florida to work at Disney world and learn at their college program. He stayed on the computer for a long time and each of us got a chance to come by and catch up with him and his new adventure.

Everyone had a fantastic time at the party! We had a delicious dinner of my brother Jeff's homemade carnitas, ribs, and salsa, and my mom's favorite El Pollo Loco foods my brother Dave brought.

After dinner, the kids went upstairs to play and the adults visited downstairs. We enjoyed all the fun family time, but most of all, it was so great to see my mom's face beeming with happiness on her special day!

Now for some collages of my family and two of my mom's friends we invited, Marilyn Asplund and Diane Gomez. (We only invited two of her friends because with just family and those two friends we were already at 40 people)