Charisse's Surprise Party

Charisse and I were driving somewhere about two or three months ago and she turned to me and said very seriously "Is Tim planning surprise party for my 40th birthday?" And at the time, I was able to truthfully say "Not that I know of." She declared that was good news because she HATES surprises and he wouldn't clean the toilets properly and her anxiety would take over and she'd run amok around the neighborhood instead of entering her own house if she even remotely expected something.

So, a few weeks later, I get a call from Tim because he needs help planning the surprise party!! (Tim and Candace)




Jessica and I concocted a plan to get her out of the house last Saturday. Jessica asked her to go to an early happy hour because she had to go out to dinner with her husband and kids, and early was better for me because Mark was out of town and I had to get a babysitter. Every time we talked about it with her, we had to call each other to keep our stories straight. There were so many times when we almost blew it. Jessica and I felt sick the whole week leading up to it. Convinced she was going to:
a) find out
b) not go into the house
c) freak about a dirty toilet
d) start crying hysterically
e) or flat out kill us

And Charisse did suspect, but somehow everything got explained away satisfactorily. Like when we were on the way back to her house and I was furiously (and uncharacteristically) texting her husband which roads we were on so he would know how close we were. And when I asked to come to her house before Jessica dropped me off so I could get a necklace for the babysitter who didn't accept money. And when Jessica said she needed to come in and use the bathroom before driving the short distance home.

We thought we were goners when Charisse applied lip gloss at the gate to her neighborhood. I mean, who applies lip gloss before walking into their own house? But when we pulled up, Tim had dressed in a ratty t-shirt and was digging something out of his truck. No extra cars in sight. With the garage door opened, Charisse led the way into the house (exactly as Tim planned it) and turned the corner into the kitchen. Then the yelling began! "Surprise!" (Joe B. and Jessica)



Here's the cake I made for her. It was yellow cake with chocolate buttercream on the inside.



Here's the place where Naughty Boy took a chunk out of it. After several attempts to fix it, I finally gave up and just signed his name by the loosely-covered destruction.



Happy birthday Charisse! You may be 40 but you're still FABULOUS!