A & E's Adventures: My Dad Turns 60!

Monday, February 6, 2012

My Dad Turns 60!

[Finally, life has calmed down enough to post some pictures that have been sitting on my computer for almost a month! Forgive their belatedness]

The weekend of January 16th was a special one for us - that Saturday night had been a surprise party months in the making for my Dad, to celebrate his turning 60. My mom had been "scheming" since October, and I had been working on creating a photo book full of letters and photographs from the party guests. However, as seems the way of things, not everything went to plan (though, spoiler, all the important part stuff went off without a hitch!)

Tuesday before the weekend, Ed mentioned he was feeling a little run-down, and by the next morning, he had a raging fever, chills, the whole nine yards. He suffered over the next few days, but finally started improving Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, I was counting my blessings that I was still healthy, until that same evening, when I started feeling a bit off. Friday was a work training for me (thankfully), and by the time I was trying to put together my class newsletter before the training, I could tell I was sick. I made it through 45 minutes of the training before I had to head back home, where I discovered I definitely had Ed's fever, chills and the like. Bad timing, to say the least.

So, the trip down south was not everything I could have hoped, as I was still very sick. Luckily Ed drove the whole way.

However, it was so worth it to be there and see the results of all of my mom's planning.

Family from near and far were there.

Of course our amazing niece was the center of attention. She, meanwhile, was enamoured with a party balloon.

Ed got to have fun interacting, while I tried to keep my distance and hydrate, while we waited for my dad to show up.

Finally, we saw my parents, uncle, sister, and family friend pull up and they walked around the corner. The smile on my Dad's face was the greatest!

I sat through about half of dinner, before I decided it would be best to head back to the house and rest a little before the 3rd part of the surprise happened (the first surprise was the visit by my dad's brother, Kirk, from Florida, and our family friend, Becky, from Sonoma area). The finale was having all of my dad's friends waiting back at the house for him when they came back from dinner.

Of course, I didn't entirely think about that in my semi-delirious state, so I was surprised, to say the least, when I walked in and came face to face with a room literally packed with familiar faces. It ended up that I was only a little ahead of my family, anyways, so there was no rest for me.

The silver lining? I got to see my dad's incredibly shocked face when he walked in. There was no question that this was a surprise!

The very last surprise was the cake, an amazing creation to honor my dad's life all across this great state.

After the cake cutting, we gave him the book, something I put countless hours into, but loved every minute. Here are some of my favorite pictures that went into the book:

My dad is the youngest one, here with his other two brothers.

At my Uncle Bruce's wedding. My dad is sporting his very hippy, long poofy hair (the hair I more or less inherited, by the way. That is why I need to straighten it!).