Surprise!

Saturday night, we were invited to a surprise birthday party. We all know how much I love birthdays! And for this party, we were an important part of the whole surprise process. That’s just an added bonus for me.

The game plan was that we were going over to Larry and Linda’s for a quiet dinner and some games. The truth was that about 20 people or so was showing up to celebrate Larry’s birthday that was a few days before. Now, the issue became how to get him out of the house.

That was Ron’s job. He and I threw around a few ideas on Saturday morning of what would motivate Larry to spend the afternoon with Ron. That’s not usually a difficult thing to do, but it had to be believable from the get go and something Larry couldn’t back out of. Larry is all about coming over to help Ron with projects on the house, but I was afraid that a last minute “project” could be postponed by Larry for another weekend. No, it had to be something he couldn’t refuse. What could it be?

Harley shopping. Simple, but effective! The only problem with that was unbeknownst to the guys, the local Harley shop closed at 4:00 p.m. That left them with very little time to drool, I mean shop. Since we couldn’t let Larry go home until around 6:00 p.m., Ron had to try to kill two hours with him before they could come back all without making him suspicious. Somehow, he talked Larry into Christmas shopping. The bad part about that is that Ron beat me getting all of his shopping done. I should have given him my list too!

So, the two guys spent the afternoon Christmas shopping. Ron tried to stall as long as he could but guys can only shop for so long if there isn’t a Harley involved. At the end, Larry got home before everyone was able to get to his house, but that was ok. The look on his face every time someone else came to the party made the surprise part of this party last a lot longer.

It turned out to be a great party. No police were called; I guess that just means we are all getting older and quieter. No injuries, no police. And we still called it a party! Anytime that good friends and good food show up at the same place, it’s definitely a party.