Surprise Party! (Part 2 of 3)

July 16, 2011 Laura

This will be the Surprise Party: Actual Party Pictures Edition. See the Planning, Detail, and Decorations Edition here. Before we begin, let me say this: I took a lot of pictures and so did Erin and Allison. I probably won't give proper credit under each picture, but if it looks blurry and like the camera was probably on the wrong settings, then I took it. If it's crystal clear and a good shot, then it belongs to one of them. Got it?

Thanks to the last super-long post, you know we used a fake invitation to get my mom to the location. The real invitation told our guests to arrive at 6:30 because the birthday girl would make her appearance at 7:00. In my head, that seemed like a perfect plan so that she wouldn't see anyone in the parking lot. And in reality it worked perfectly, but it felt like FOREVER before she finally got there.

Since my parents were "attending a party hosted by a coworker," my dad called "his coworker Heath" as they got close to the venue to ask where it was located. He was actually calling my phone to give me the signal that they were already there. As soon as I got the call, we got everyone in position. To get to the party room, you had to walk down a long hallway.

The hallway was a straight shot into our party space, so to keep her from seeing everyone from the opposite end of the hall, we decided to close the two doors. They had small windows so we were still able to watch her come in.

And, just like every surprise party in any movie you've ever seen, we had a false alarm. This couple is NOT my parents.

I quickly snapped the picture above and then jumped in with the crowd, so even I didn't realize it wasn't them until our latecomers opened the door. Frustrated, we told them to hurry and get in line because my parents were due to arrive any minute.

Sure enough, as soon as I made it back to the window, they had just opened the doors. Close call!

This is what my mom was about to see when she opened the door. The crowd was so big and wide that I couldn't get everyone in one shot, so this is just a handful of everyone there.

Here's the look on my mom's face that I was able to capture when she walked in.

Of course my dad, goofball that he is, walked in behind her like the party was for him. "For me? For her?"

My brothers and I were the first to get to hug my mom.

One of the next people my mom saw was her sister that traveled that afternoon just to surprise her.

It was a good while before she recovered from the shock. While our guests helped themselves to the food buffet, my dad took his girl out for a spin on the dance floor.

We mingled with all of our guests for a while.

Allison and her hubby came to help with the picture-taking.

And Mary and little Wesley were there too. (Rumor has it that Parks tried to lay a big kiss on Wesley's cheek, but she promptly wiped it off.)

After it looked like everyone had finished eating, my dad hopped up on stage to give a toast to my mom.

We played the slideshow immediately after Dad's toast, and then, just like at any other birthday party, we brought out the cake and sang to the birthday girl.

Mom got help from Parker blowing out all those candles. (No, we didn't put 60 candles on the cake. We're not that mean. Or maybe I just couldn't afford to buy that many...heehee.)

Mom with her kids.

After the (carrot) cake had been cut and passed around, the band cranked up the music and it was time to dance!

Have I ever told you about how my mom's friends like to get down? Woo, those ladies can boogie!

Please note the amount of sweat on the back of my dad's neck in the picture. Y'all, we danced and danced and danced, and were hurtin' the next morning.

Before I wrap this up, let me leave you with some pictures of me and Doc. As hosts of the party, we felt the need to get things started on the dance floor. I don't think I realized how many awesome pictures of us were being taken at the time. But they can't ever be used as blackmail if I go ahead and post them myself, right?

Tell me, who do you think has the better moves? Him or me?

So maybe we like to get a little creative when we dance. Anything to keep everyone entertained...

I'll be back with the third and final edition soon!

Surprise Party! (Part 1 of 3)

July 13, 2011 Laura

Alternate title: Surprise Party - Planning, Details, and Decorations Edition Mom, this is where I will attempt to explain everything you missed out on over the past few weeks.

Let's get started. When did we decide to throw a surprise party? I'll be honest, it was during church one Sunday. After discussing that my mom had a milestone birthday coming up, my sister-in-law Beth asked me if we were throwing a party. I cocked my head to the side and mulled that over for a minute, and before the preacher could wrap up his sermon and give a benediction, the wheels were already turning and I was forming a plan. I knew I needed to do some preliminary research and figure out a few details before I took the idea to my dad.

The following Sunday in church (apparently that's where we have our family meetings) I leaned over to my dad who was sitting next to me in the pew and whispered, "What do you think about a surprise party for Mom?" He gave me a little half shrug, half nod that I took as a positive sign. Now came the crucial part. I leaned over one more time, "Is your checkbook in?" He turned and gave me a glance and I flashed my I'm-your-only-daughter-please-daddy-please-it-would-make-mom-so-happy look and guys, he gave me the nod!

So that was that. I immediately went into planning overdrive. First things first, we had to settle on a date. This was the biggest stress of the whole party. We were about 5 weeks out and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how busy summers are. Between holidays and weddings and beach trips and canoe trips, pretty much every weekend was book. I practically cried in my cubicle as I slowly watched all my surprise party ideas fade away because we couldn't even decide on a date.

I'll spare you all the back-and-forths and just say we finally landed on Sunday, July 10, just two days before my mom's actual birthday. Next step: location. I already had a great venue in mind but my dad was all over me about keeping the budget low. Luckily, since our party was now officially on a Sunday, I was able to weasel the price down a little. (It's amazing how much cheaper things are when your party's not on a Saturday and the word "wedding" isn't attached to it.) The space was available so we locked it in. (By the way, my dad's idea was to have the party in his backyard. For any of you reading this that actually attended the party on Sunday when it was 100+ outside, you can thank me nixing that idea.) I was also on the hunt for some kind of musical act. I had originally thought of just getting a two-person act for a little background music, but when I asked my dad if he had any ideas, his response was, "We gotta get that band from your wedding!" I reminded him how much we paid them for my wedding but he said to give 'em a shout anyway. Remember how I said things are cheaper when you ditch the word "wedding"? Worked here too.

Ok, with three major things nailed down - date, venue, music - the only big thing left was food. I wanted to outsource it so I didn't have to spend all weekend cooking. (I already knew I was going to be busy since it was Kendra's wedding weekend.) I convinced my dad to meet me with me and the same caterer that did our wedding. It wasn't hard to get my dad on board with this since he was pleased with their food a couple years ago. Done. Check that off the list.

All we needed now was decorations. In keeping with the repeat-everything-from-my-wedding theme, I raided my mom's attic while she was out of town and pulled down all of our glass candle holders. If you attended our wedding, or even if you've just seen pictures, you may remember that we filled the bottoms of them up with green gumballs, like this:

And this:

Maybe you also remember the candy buffet from our reception. While I was up in the attic, I went ahead and grabbed everything from that too.

At this point, everything seemed to be falling into place and going really well. And then, just like that, everything decided to cause me stress.

First, my dad calls me to tell me he handed Mom his phone to find an email and she asked about an email I sent him with the caterer's name as the subject line. "You did WHAT??" Rule #1: When planning a surprise party, never ever ever let the surprisee read through your emails. Geez. You'd think that was common sense.

Invitations were a cause of stress too. Not the making of them (thanks, Matt!), that part was fine. But the minute I put them in the mail, I freaked out. Now it was no longer a secret that just my family and I was keeping. Within 24 hours 120 more people would know about and any one of them could slip and tell her.

Speaking of invitations, wanna see them? They turned out really cute.

You know how they say when you're planning a wedding, you take the total number of people you're inviting, divide it in half, and that's how many you should plan for? Well, I wasn't sure if that formula worked for surprise parties, so I thought ahead and included an RSVP card with each invitation.

Two days after the invitations were mailed out, I excitedly ran out to get the mail after work and....nothing. Not a single one. The next day I got about 5. Only five! Weren't people excited?!? I started freaking out again. They trickled in in threes and fours for the remainder of that week, then I had to wait over the holiday mail break. That Tuesday, the 5th, I only got 3 more. Finally, on Wednesday, just 4 days before the big event, I got what I'd been hoping for: 17 RSVP cards in my inbox. Jackpot. I could finally rest easy knowing people were coming to the party. Oh, but you know what's weird? Every single day when I pulled out the RSVPs, the first one I opened was always a Regret. Even the day we got 17 cards and 16 of them were Yesses, the first one was the Regret. And every single time, my heart sank. I was terrified of noone showing up.

In case you're wondering how we were planning on getting my mom to this never-heard-of venue on a Sunday night, I had already thought of that too. The week my mom was at the beach with her friends, this invitation arrived at her house:

An engagement party for Grant Hubbard and his fiance Angela Ray. Grant is the son of one of my dad's coworkers. Angela Ray is 100% completely made up. Actually, I'm sure an Angela Ray or two exists out there somewhere, and hey, maybe Grant has even dated one, but for the purpose of this party and this invitation, Angela Ray is as real as the WWF Wrestling my brother used to make me watch when we were little.

Here are all the invitations, including the fake one, addressed and ready to go.

Mom, are you thinking That's not the invitation that came to my house... ? If so, you'd be correct. This invitation, hand-written by me in cursive, which I never ever do, arrived at your house on Tuesday. Dad wasted no time in telling me it looked just like my handwriting. Ugh. So I threw it away, let someone at work address a new one, and dropped it back in the mail. Thank goodness you were gone for a whole week and I was able to get a do-over!

Moving on to something else that stressed me out: gumballs. I wanted colorful gumballs for all the candle holders. I was going with a colorful, festive theme. Sounds easy enough, right? Two Friday's before the party (July 1) I visited the local candy store and completely struck out. No gumballs. That afternoon I hopped on Sam's website and saw that they sold them. I arranged to meet my SIL Erin at Costco bright and early the following morning. I figured that since Sam's had them on their website, Costco must sell them too, right? Wrong. No such luck. A few days passed and on Tuesday morning (T-minus 5 days from the party), I drove out to the nearest Sam's, bought a membership, and set out to find my gumballs. Strike three, I'm out! Enter panic mode.

That night I tried my luck and placed an order on Sam's website. The price was right, but since shipping was included, I couldn't expedite my order. Drats! I called Customer Service to see if they could help me, but my order wasn't even showing up on their system yet. Double drats! My order confirmation email said my expected arrival date was between July 8 and July 14. The party was on the 10th. The odds were against me. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Two days later, this arrived on my doorstep. Cue the hallelujah chorus!

I tore open the box just to make sure. Gumballs! Sweet, colorful, flavor-gone-in-sixty-seconds gumballs!

Even though the gumballs were my primary decoration, I did have a couple of craft projects to knock out. Both were easy, but they did take a little time. Instead of buying balloon weights (Have you seen how expensive those things are? Ridiculous!) I decided to make my own. The ceiling in our event space was really high, so I figured the more of these I had to tie balloons to, the better.

Pea gravel + colorful celephane + curling ribbon = homemade balloon weights.

My other project was candy bags for the candy buffet. I already had some leftover from my wedding, but they had an "E" sticker on them. That was easy to fix with labels one size bigger with "60" printed on them.

[Side note: I just scrolled up and realized how incredibly long this is getting. Props to anyone who actually reads all of this.]

It's a good thing my mom didn't decide to randomly stop by house during all this planning, since my dining room looked like this.

Let's go ahead and fast-forward to the day of the party. We all went to church as usual; couldn't do anything to throw Mom off. As far as I knew, we had made it this far without her finding out, even though we'd had several close calls. Several people made comments to me at church that morning ("Can't wait for tonight!" "Looking forward to it!" "What should I wear?") and they were making me nervous. I wanted to hiss Stop talking to me! My mom could be watching!

Normally, Doc and I have lunch at my parents' house after church, but this time we needed to hit the road to start setting up. We made up an excuse - gonna do yardwork, yadda yadda - and got the heck out of there. The bulk of the afternoon was spent at the venue getting things ready. Both Beth and Erin met me and Doc there and we all buckled down and got to work. Who knew it could take so long to put helium in balloons? Allison met us there too to get everything for the slideshow set up. Good thing, since we had some incompatible cord issues that needed to be worked out. Close call!

Around 4 in the afternoon, I headed home to shower and get cleaned up. There were still a few last-minute items I needed to pick up too. On my way home, I called Mom just to check in and see if she suspected anything. Our conversation consisted of her telling me she didn't want to go to this party tonight, she wasn't going to know anybody, and what the heck was she supposed to wear? Perfect. Right where we wanted her.

An hour-ish later I was in the car headed back to the venue when my dad called and this conversation ensued:

Dad: You've gotta call your mother. Me: [panic] Why?!? What's wrong? Dad: She wants me to swing by your house on our way to the party so she can get your sewing machine. Call her and tell her you're not home. Me: Wait, you want me to just call her and tell her I'm not home? I just talked to her a few minutes ago. Dad: I don't care, think of something!

So I made up some lame excuse to call my mom and while I had her on the phone, just casually mentioned that we were going out to dinner with Matt and Mary. I had to tell her we were already in the car on our way to their house for fear she might tell me to leave the sewing machine outside or something. According to all my conversations with her that day, I'd already done yardwork (not true), gone to the grocery store (not true), and was now cleaned up and on my way out to dinner (not true). Good thing she didn't question me!

Back at the venue, I barely got the last balloons blown up before our firsts guests arrived. My decorations were simple - colorful gumballs and colorful balloons. Oh, and colorful candy too.

(Some photos by me and some by Allison.)

I made little labels for each of the candy holders out of chalkboard vinyl. My first time to use it...pretty cool.

I was able to use the chalkboard vinyl on this drink pitcher too.

I found these old framed pictures from my grandmother's house and just topped them with a little party hat.

And that was the extent of our decorating.

Mom, fill caught up? Still wondering how you missed everything? We're pretty sneaky, but it was really, really tough keeping the secret from you! I needed to be able to call and bounce ideas off of you. This may be the last time I plan a party without you. My blood pressure can't handle the stress (see: picking a date, waiting for RSVPs, gumballs)!

One hundred thousand points to anyone who actually read this whole dang thing. Now we're primed and ready for pictures from the par-tay, so stay tuned!

Sixty!

July 12, 2011 Laura

Today's the day my mom officially turns the big six-oh! Happy birthday, Mom! You don't get to celebrate turning 60 every year, so my family and I decided to do it up big! We sent out invitations to all of her favorite people and Sunday night we gathered to give her one heck of a surprise. It was a super good time, and I have so many pictures to share from it. But, they aren't quite ready yet.

So, today I'm going to show you some old pictures. Not old as in from past blog posts, but old as in from when mi madre was a little baby. We put together a slideshow to play at the party (special shout-out to Allison for all her help!) and these are some of the pictures from it. Admittedly, some of them aren't the best pictures. But here's the thing: I had to be sneaky about getting photos from my mom's house, which meant I couldn't ask her where the box of her baby photos is hiding. I tore her house apart looking for those pictures one day while she was out, but to no avail. (After the party, I finally asked her where they are and she said she shoved them under her bed. The ONE place I didn't look. Sigh...) So these pictures all came from my aunt, who graciously dug through all of her baby photos and pulled out any and all of them that had my mom in them and mailed them to me. (Thank you, Aunt Kim!)

Did I mention that the only photo scanner I have free access to lives at my mom's house, specifically in her bedroom? Yea, so that was tricky too. Thank goodness for her beach trip, or I don't know how I would've pulled this off. Also, I hope that's the last time I have to spend an afternoon sitting at her rickity old (and majorly slow) computer.

Now, without further adieu, let's take a look at my mom through the years.

Who doesn't love a bathtub shot? Even if the bathtub is actually a basin sitting on a table...

My mom with her dad, my Pepaw, dressed up for Sunday church.

Something about the look on this face tells me she may have been up to no good.

Just another day hanging out at the Water Department...

Somebody does not look too happy about the new addition of a little sister.

Pretty princesses! I bet Bren would love to have this dress to play in.

Check out these hats! They're kinda like plates!

This picture (below) cracks.me.up! I have no idea what the story behind this picture is, but in my head, my mom is being punished for not having a good attitude like her little sister, and so she has to wear the mask.

This is one of my favorites because I still see this same smile on my mom's face all the time. She's second from the right, in case you can't tell.

It seems as though my mom went through a little bit of a sassy stage where she didn't smile for the camera. There are several photos of her like this.

I know my mom's eyes are closed in this picture, but I love it because of my Pepaw. I feel like he's standing proud and his face says, "Yea, these are my girls."

This picture, I think, was taken at the brunch on my mom and dad's wedding day. As the story goes, this would be right after my dad informed my mom that he lost all of their honeymoon money the night before in a game of poker...to his brother.

I'm pretty sure this is my oldest brother, Nick, when he was a baby. But that's not the point of this picture. See the dog on the couch? Anyone else think it looks just like Henry?

Fast forward a few years later and we're finally a family of five. Betcha can't guess which one of us kids was the thumb-sucker.

Three generations of girls.

One of my favorite family photos from my mom's side of the family, even though I think my eyes are closed. This was on Christmas morning, after we'd already opened gifts, had breakfast, and completely un-decorated my Memaw's house. We were all about to hit the road to go visit with other sides of our families.

My mom has gotten to watch all three of her children get married.

And now she has a slew of grandkids!

I think my mom would agree that she's had some pretty fun times over the years, especially being married to a clown like my dad.

He's pretty smitten with her.

Happy, happy day to you, Mom...and many, many more! I love you!

Exhausted

July 11, 2011 Laura

I can barely hold my eyelids open as I type this, but there are so many things to blog about. We're fresh off a marathon weekend of awesome events and while we had a blast at all of them, we are now struggling to recover! First things first, I can't write a single thing about this weekend without mentioning that one of my best buds got married! We waited for 7-9-11 to get here for so long, and now I can't believe it has come and gone. If you thought the royal wedding was a big deal, you are wrong, as this was certainly the event of the year. Kendra and Antonio threw a party like no other, and it is one we will not forget!

Because I'm struggling to stay awake, here are my highlights from the weekend, bullet-style.

The fact that our friend, Darrin, live-tweeted the entire event (follow him: @darrinearl). He had help from lots of us that were there, but he was very instrumental in getting everything started and creating the hash tag for the event. (Am I speaking a foreign language to you? For you non-tweeters, twitter is a way to let your friends know what you're doing in 140 characters or less. A hash tag can be used for a trending topic - for example, you could search #caseyanthony if you wanted to keep up with all the craziness that is that trial.) Search #kentonio2011 if you want to read what all the party-goers, me included, had to say during the ceremony and reception!
Not only did Darrin live-tweet the event, he also created a website to journal all the tweets and updates. Visit it here for lots of pictures and details.
The rehearsal dinner on Friday was fun and relaxed, just like the bride and groom. For dinner, we had a variety of foods from all of their favorite places, including tacos from Moe's, chicken from Chik-Fil-A, sandwiches from Lenny's, and much more. So yummy, and such a great idea.
Kendra was absolutely stunning. She looks great any day of the week, but on Saturday, she absolutely glowed. That girl knows how to rock a strapless white "princess" dress.
Kendra's dad was one of the proudest father of the brides I've ever seen. He looked mighty fine walking his baby girl down the aisle, and he sure put on a good party afterwards!
My friend Mary Elizabeth sang "Beautiful" during the ceremony and it was, indeed, beautiful. Her voice is angelic and the song was filled with emotion. I could listen to her sing all day!
Both the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom wore hats and they did not disappoint. Several other hats were in attendance, with one particular hat arriving on two different heads. The fashion statements made it a true spectator's event.
The flowers decorating both the church and the reception hall were b-e-a-utiful. Huge arrangements of mostly white and green with a touch of pink thrown in. They all had the prettiest white hydrangeas I've ever seen. I really wanted to grab an arrangement to take with me as I left.
The reception was crazy-fun. After a cocktail and appetizer hour, we had dinner from several different stations. There was a catfish buffet, a pasta bar, an asian area that had cute little chinese takeout boxes filled with fried rice, and mini cheeseburgers and fries. Yummy in my tummy!
The dj kept the dance floor full by playing all the right songs. Who knew there were so many line dances? He played several back to back and the dance floor was packed for every single one of them.
The groom ditched his jacket for the reception and it turns out he was sporting a pair of green suspenders. I have decided I like boys in suspenders. That should happen more often.
There was a black jack dealer there. Yes, a real dealer with a real black jack table. It was pretty awesome, and completely unique!
As if the black jack table wasn't cool enough, there was also a table were you could get custom rolled cigars. I am not really the cigar smoking type, but it was pretty cool to watch the professional cigar roller. My dad, and I'm sure many others, was definitely a happy camper.
At one point during the ceremony, everyone on the dance floor made a train and danced all the way around the room, picking up people as they passed by. I've seen this done in plenty of movies, but it may have been my first time to see it happen at a wedding reception.
The bridal cake was two small-ish cake layers stacked on top of a ginormous cupcake tree. There were cupcakes everywhere and they were all different flavors. Doc had strawberry, I had vanilla (though the flavor was probably a much fancier name than that). The icing was fluffy and light. My first thought when I woke up Saturday morning was that I wanted another one of those cupcakes.
The groom's birthday is next week and, to surprise him, Kendra made special arrangements for his birthday/groom cake to be wheeled out than none other than The Grizz! Antonio is a huge Grizzlies fan and the look on his face when he saw The Grizz come out was priceless. His cake was a Florida Gator wearing a Memphis jersey with a Duke basketball in his mouth (I think that covered all of Antonio's favorite teams). After singing and blowing out birthday candles, The Grizz hosted a dance off (hilarious) and then threw out t-shirts into the crowd. It was just as good as being at a game! No, actually it was better than that.
After bustin' a move on the dance floor and completely sweating through all of our clothes, we sent the newlyweds off through a tunnel of bubbles and ribbon wands. It was a perfect night!
Except for one thing: my friend Matt was in charge of putting the groom's bags into the limo. Simple enough, except that it turns out there was another wedding on site in a different hall, which means two limos were parked out front. Antonio's personal items rode off with the wrong couple and poor Matt had to track it down. While completely hilarious to me (seriously, I was doubled-over in laughter), I'm sure it caused a little stress for Matt. I mean, who wants to have to call up a newlywed's hotel room on their wedding night? Awk-ward.

I swore I was going to go to bed at 8:45 tonight, and now it's already 10:23. Crap! There is so much more I want to tell you about this weekend, like how we totally managed to completely surprise my mom and throw her a 60th birthday party. I'm still sorting through tons of pictures, but there's lots more to come!

For now, I'll leave you with this. I think it's the perfect picture to represent Kendra and Antonio's awesome wedding weekend! Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Pickens!

(I completely stole this picture from Antonio's twitter feed [@themrantonio], but I think it was taken by their photographer. All credit should go to him/her, whoever they may be...)

4th of July

July 7, 2011 Laura

I don't have much time to write but I do want to post some pictures from 4th of July before it gets to be too late. This coming weekend is packed full of fun things so I know there will be different things to write about next week...better get these done now. Doc and I were invited to two parties to celebrate the holiday. He got up early that morning to get in a round of golf and I headed down to the kitchen to work on some food stuffs. Why is that I wake up at 6:00 on days when I could sleep in?? Since I was up anyway I got to work on my festive red, white, and blue strawberries.

This idea came via Martha Stewart and was all over the blogosphere last week. How can she make things look so daggum easy? The picture floating around the web made it look easy enough - dip a strawberry into white chocolate and then again into blue sugar for a patriotic effect. I knew I already had some light blue sugar on hand so I thought I was set. But making these things ended up being a pain in the rear! If you dipped into the sugar too soon after dipping into the melted chocolate, the chocolate got messed up. And you couldn't set them down to dry for a minute because then the bottoms would be messed up. I wish you could've seen how I had my assembly line rigged up; I would definitely get points for creativity.

They were a lot more fun to eat!

I had a box of cake mix on hand, too, so I whipped up a batch of festive cupcakes. They were dee-lish.

Party Number One was a family gathering at my brother's house. I could see this becoming a tradition. It's nice to have a pool to jump in during the middle of the summer!

This picture has to be posted, not just for the super cute fella but also for the towel.