Surprise!

Thankfully, Biscuit woke up this morning with no fever. So back to our regularly scheduled programming. I'll tell you about the rest of our vacation week.

Here was the schedule for our so-called vacation (from Friday, May 11 to Sunday, May 18):

• Friday: We left after work and drove 2 1/2 hours to my parents' house.
• Saturday afternoon: We went over to my brother's house (about 5 minutes away from my parents' house) to hang out with him, his wife and kids (and goats and chickens and dog).
• Saturday night: We had a surprise birthday party for my brother.
• Sunday morning: We went to church with Mama for Mother's Day.
• Sunday afternoon: We had a cookout with my parents and my brother and his family.
• Sunday evening: Jeff and I headed to the beach (a 2 1/2-hour drive from my parents' house).
• Wednesday evening: Jeff and I came back from the beach.
• Thursday: We did laundry and tried to get some rest. That evening, we had dinner with the whole family and put on our own fireworks show.
• Friday morning: We went to my niece's awards show at her middle school. She won 4 or 5 awards, and because I have Biscuit and my nieces and nephew camera trained, my niece would get a certificate, then turn toward me, hold up her certificate and smile. After the ceremony, my parents, Jeff, Griffin and I headed out of state for our family reunion (a 5 1/2-hour drive). We followed each other all the way there, so we stopped and had lunch together. We spent Friday night at my uncle's house.
• Saturday: We hung out with family and got food ready for the reunion.
• Saturday evening: We headed to a hotel closer to the reunion site to spend Saturday night (my brother and his family stayed, there, too). We didn't know until the next morning that some of our cousins were staying in the room right under ours at the hotel.
• Sunday morning: We drove to the state park for the reunion. About 3 p.m., we left to drive home. We usually spend Sunday night at my uncle's house and go home Monday, but Jeff couldn't miss work Monday, which mean a 7 1/2-hour drive home after the reunion. My brother and his family were driving on the same interstate as us, so we stopped and had dinner with them before we drove the rest of the way home. We got home about 11:30 p.m.

10 days, 3 states, a million people and lots of fun.

My brother turned 40 years old on May 11. It's hard for me to believe he's 40. I still remember all the fights we had as kids, when I would throw one of his shoes out the front door then lock him out of the house. And I still remember all the miles we logged on our bicycles, pretending to be motorcycle cops.

Now he's married with three kids, a nice house and a grown-up job.

His wife mentioned to me back in February that she'd like to do something special for his milestone birthday. A surprise party.

So we set to work. She got addresses of friends and family, and we decided on a restaurant. We were looking for something centrally located to all the guests, but in their town, there are only a couple of restaurants that can accommodate as many people as we wanted to invite.

I made up the invitations, using some childhood photos of my brother that I had borrowed from Mama. Then I addressed all the envelopes. We were expecting close to 50 people.

As I took a final look at the invitations, it occurred to me that I hadn't double-checked with my sister-in-law about the restaurant.

I called her, and we ended up having one of those I-thought-you-called-the-restaurant, no-I-thought-YOU-called-the-restaurant conversations. Turns out neither of us had called. And the restaurant was booked up for the night we needed it.

With one of the two possible restaurants booked up, we had to turn to the other. It was available, but it's not my brother's favorite place to eat. But we didn't really have a choice, so I remade the invitations with the other restaurant's name and address and got them reprinted then sent out.

We got some decorations and ordered a cake with a picture of my brother on his motorcycle on it.

We were at my brother's house the whole afternoon before the party, and we had to work out the details of how to pick up the cake and get to the restaurant without him being suspicious. We also needed to figure out how to explain that we were having dinner at a restaurant we never go to.

Mama came up with a good story. She said that she and Jeff were talking about home-cooking, and she asked him if he had ever been to the home-cooking buffet restaurant near them. He said no, so that was our excuse to choose that place. We had all our bases covered.

When my brother came into the restaurant, we all yelled surprise. He said he honestly had no idea until he pulled into the restaurant parking lot and started seeing cars that belonged to people he knew, including a couple of in-the-process-of-being-redone classic cars that couldn't be mistaken.

It was a good night. Everybody in the room (all 46 people) knew at least a couple of other people, so everybody had at least a couple of other people to talk to. 

The invitation said no gifts, but a couple of people brought gag gifts. My brother got some adult diapers, hemorrhoid cream and a six-pack of nutrition drinks for old people.

And I haven't seen him smile that much in a long time.

Here's a picture of the cake and a picture of Biscuit enjoying himself: