The Great Birthday Surprise Begins To Unfold

So as many of you know, I have been working on a plan to celebrate Jen's 30th Birthday (officially on the 17th if you are interested).

Well the first part of that plan unfolded this evening. It involved having 2 of Jen's good friends from Philadelphia (Tara) and Chicago (Alicia) fly in to spend the weekend with us.

So it was quite a good plan originally. The two girls did me a favor and coordinated their flights to get in to LAX at the same time so I did not have to do the drive twice. But of course, man plans and god laughs. Tara's flight ended up being 2 and a half hours late arriving which threw a small spanner in the works.

I had worked it out with Jen's parents (Ted & Les) to create a story that they were coming down to stay for the weekend and arriving today - this way Jen would at least be expecting company and also would not find it strange when I started tidying up the house! :)

So Ted & Les (well mostly Ted, as Les cannot keep a secret so she decided to keep quiet) were real troopers today and played along well, even with the slight change in plans because of the delayed flight. So they were calling Jen during the day giving her updates on their progress driving down from Sacramento - all lies of course. Then when Tara's plane was late Ted invented this story about bad traffic on the freeway and how they were stopping for food and waiting it out etc. etc.

Meanwhile, I had picked up Alicia and we were killing time sitting in the bar drinking at the Sheraton by LAX. My cell phone was running hot between updates from Ted and then updates from Jen about what her Dad had told her - I got to hear both sides of the saga.

Finally, Tara's plane touched down and we were able to pick her up.

When we finally got back to our place, I had Tara and Alicia wait in the garage while I went in and got Jen to put the kid down (in case she dropped him in her excitement) and then called the girls in. Here is some terribly dark and blurry video (my apologies) of that moment.



More surprises to come during the weekend ...