Surprise!

AM hit the big 4-0 this week. To celebrate we visited a local pancake house where "rain, sleet, or shine there is always a line" for breakfast and then for dinner a little italian. Her big over-the-hill birthday present was a serger. Now to non-sewers like myself, a serger and a sewing machine seem like pretty much the same machine, but apparently they are entirely different, sort of like a road bike and a mountain bike, except of course its more obvious why you need two bikes to have fun that two sewing machines...

Then on Saturday, we had a surprise party. I had smuggled decorations and food to our friend's houses and the playhouse for safekeeping. (I even got up in the middle of the night once to transfer things from the wagon to the playhouse because I realized that AM was likely to drive the wagon the next morning and might get suspicious about the towels covering stuff up in the back. Fortunately there was a big windstorm that night so when she asked why I got up, I could say I was checking on our trashcan that had in fact been blown over in the storm.) On Saturday, one of AM's friends invited her to lunch to get her out of the house so I could decorate. I then picked her up directly from the restaurant on our way to a juggling show that we as a family had tickets too. (Which by the way was fantastic.) This provided the cover for people to assemble at our house. Then when we came home, I made sure she was the first to enter the house. She was quite surprised when everyone jumped out. I was trying to follow along with the camera to get video coverage, but my video feed turned out real jumpy, so I won't post it. Anyway it turned out well and was lots of fun. Thanks to any of you out in the blogosphere who participated.