A little surprise!

I'm going to try and shorten this story since I don't have pictures to break it up with, but it might be a little draining to read.  You can't say I didn't warn you :).

If you haven't already figured it out, I love to surprise Gary!  I think it's fun and exciting and I'm such a complete hopeless romantic it's out of control.  So, I had been planning since last week sometime to make Gary dinner last night for his birthday and surprise him when he got home.  Well, the plan seemed to fail when he told me either Saturday or Sunday that he wasn't going into the office at all on Monday. 

Sunday afternoon we went to his parent's house for lunch and I told his mom and sister that I needed one of them to come up with an 'emergency' to get him out of the house between 3:30-5:30ish.  They shook their heads in agreement, so I thought whew the toughest part is over!

Before church Sunday evening, Gary had a session and I thought that would be the perfect opportunity for me to shop for the ingredients for our dinner. I was planning on making...

Madeira Chicken

and

 His favorite Chess Pie

I honestly had a lot of the ingredients so I only had to pick up a few things.  Normally when he gets back from his session I haven't started getting ready for evening worship, but this Sunday was different.  When he walked in the door I was sitting in the living room dressed and ready to go working a new craft project (blog coming soon).  He was kind of taken back, but obviously didn't think much about it cause he just sat down and started watching the movie I had in until it was time to leave.  Oh and by the way I hid the few ingredients I had to get just in case he saw them and wondered when and why I had bought them.  Surprisingly our fridge is quite full right now so I could have put them in plain daylight and he probably wouldn't have noticed, but I did hide them in a draw instead. 

I had also already been to get him his birthday present during the week.  I have a stash of wedding gifts I've recently bought that are hanging out in our office.  He knows they are there and has no reason to go through them so I just stuffed his birthday bag behind those.  He's pretty easy to surprise with presents because he's not much of the snooper.  Speaking of, have you ever heard the story about me searching for my engagement ring???  Well, it's funny and that's a whole other blog post.

Back to the topic at hand...So, I came into work yesterday at 6 so that I could leave at 3 and head home to have the extra time to cook.  Well, at around 2 his sister calls and says, "So, what exactly am I supposed to do?"  I knew at that moment that I had to come up with another plan.  His friend, Jimmy, works with my company now, but he used to work with Gary doing SFT, but he didn't have enough funds so he had to find a "real job."  Him and his wife are leaving for Costa Rica on Thursday and so he and I collectivly came up with the idea that Jimmy needed some materials printed off so they could get mailed out today.  It was pretty genious and fool-proof (is that the right word?)...so we thought. 

I had to make one final stop before heading home, but Jimmy called him at 3:15 and told him about his emergency.  The printing off and dropping the papers off would take Gary about 45-an hour.  So, if he would have left in a hurry (like I thought he would), we would need to find somewhere else for him to go at about 4. 

Laura, his sister, has been getting rid of girl baby clothes to make room for Benjamin's stuff.  I took a few things that I liked recently (no we aren't pregnant, but it's ok to plan ahead) and had told her I didn't really want anymore.  However, for the surprise purposes I had told her that I might send Gary over to get some, but whatever he got I would just give back to her later.  So, the plan was when I got home I would call him to see where he was and then 'while he was out' he could stop by Laura's for me.  Laura was ready to stall (he would have been so frustrated!!).  But instead of him already being gone when I got home his car was still there!!!!!!  I literally pulled in our neighborhood, turned down our road and slammed on my brakes when I saw his car (thankfully nobody was behind me) and did a U-turn.  I drove around the neighborhood and called him and acted as though I was just about to get off work.  He said he was about to START working out and then Jimmy needed him to go print some stuff off.  START working out???  He was already putting me behind, but just now Starting to work out??  His workouts aren't really that long, but longer than I was willing to wait.  At this point it became a will to wait.  I could have busted up in there and ruined the whole surprise, but instead I parked at a little parking lot down the road where I could see the house and waited...and waited...and waited for about 40 minutes!!!  I called and texted everyone who knew about the surprise and they all just laughed.

So, finally at about 4:40 he walked outside and then he walked back in...Then he finally left for good.  When I got in the house I was hoping all of the dishes and livingroom were clean, but alas they were not.  I'm not much of the multi-tasker when it comes to cooking so I had to rush around and I was sweating like CRAZY!!!!  

So, he ended up finishing the printing and his friend Lee was home at that point.  Lee intercepted him and he didn't even have to go to Laura's.  He went to Lee's and hung out for a while and by the time he got home I had all the curtains pulled (since it was still very sunny out) with candles lit and his dinner sitting on the table!  He was completely surprised. 

He told me later that he thought there was going to be a party at Lee and Rachel's and once he left there he didn't think anything was going on.  I love surprising him!!  I took some pictures of our food, but I couldn't upload them today.  Sorry!  Just know that it was good!!!!!!!!!!!!  And actually it looked A LOT like the pictures above!!!!

I got him a pink bow tie and it is soo cute and I can't wait until he wears it.  Later on he had to clean the fish he and his Pop had caught.  That's always a fun time in our house!  

All in all I think it was a pretty good birthday/first date anniversary!!!

Happy Birthday (it's always someones birthday right?),

Kimberly

P.S. I love surprises and this is the only one I have had recently ;).