How I LOVE surprises!

I love surprises. The kind that you don't expect or know to expect.  Not the ones where somebody tells you "I have a surprise for you but you can't know until Saturday."

I love doing surprise parties for people.  I love it when people are genuinely flabbergasted when they find out their loves puts the time and effort into doing something really special. This is a skill, folks.  You need to think like the person you're trying to surprise and think of every possible thing that could go wrong to do it right.  So planning for somebody who worries about all the small details (like me) are the hardest ones to surprise.  I'm not sure how on EARTH he surprised me with the engagement (and having Emily G. there to capture the moment) is way beyond me...

For me to surprise Dave isn't a huge challenge.  I like to do things that makes him smile.  He doesn't expect much from me (except the cooking a warm meal every night bit, but he still says "thank you" every time... precious).  So when I do something, he gets so stoked.  When we were starting to date, he went out with his buddies and had a good time.  He asked me to pick him up from the Metro in DC.  But I surprised him by washing his car (aka his baby).  Yes, I spent my free afternoon washing his car.  Silly but true!  That's small potatoes compared to what I was able to pull off for his birthday last year!

It was the first time back to the US that he was celebrating his birthday.  He spent his 21st and a few subsequent birthdays in Japan where the norm with his Marine buddies was going hammered or scuba diving.  If you know his love for scuba diving you know that I can't really beat that... especially in Oki where the water is amazing.  Instead of planning a weekend (birthdays should be an entire weekend... it's the standard, it should be the same for mine too!) of booze and turquoise waters, I planned a sequence of surprises.

Thursday afternoon, I picked his best friend from high school up from the airport.  I had never met this man.  I'd exchanged emails and he seemed nice enough! He was ready to surprise Dave too!

Friday evening, after another long drive up from NC, he arrived at my apartment.  I had arranged a "scavenger hunt" of sorts and he went off looking for his surprises about the house.  His best friend was on the balcony behind a closed door armed with a camera!

(L: Dave's Buddy, R: Dave in front of the White House)

Then we had a lovely day in DC and nothing crazy happened that day.  That evening, I asked Dave to call his dad to wish him a happy father's day.  Well, his dad was at a noisy restaurant so he couldn't really talk.  No biggie right?  We continued our journey to a restaurant that he had been dying to go to (ever been to Fogo de Chao?).  He was SO excited and super surprised that I had remembered that he wanted to go to this steak and meat heaven!  The fun doesn't end there!  The hostess made us wait just for kicks to throw Dave off because the rest of his party (his family all the way from Boston) were already seated and ready to surprise him!!  The look on his face! I'm sad I didn't have a camera.  Dave's parents will forever get a kick out of the look on his face. It was EPIC.  We hung out at the restaurant for 4.5 hours! It was an incredible meal!!

 (Thanks for helping me surprise him!!)

 (Excited about his birthday cake!)

 (Happy Birthday and more to come!)

I'm not going to ask more people to fly around the country to surprise him for his birthday but I'm planning something fun for him again this year.  Perhaps his birthday will become a way to conquer "firsts." I'm not sure how we'll manage when he's 50 but I'm sure I'll still have some tricks up my sleeve.


So, to top the first birthday party will be a feat.  But I have 2 months and I'm well on my way!