That Worked Out Rather Well

So for Tash's 50th Birthday, I decided to give her a surprise party. That was last night.

Plans were made, lists drawn up, and things prepared and I let the kids in on it and we got to work.

Operation Sleepy Sloth (Tash's declared spirit animal is a Sloth) thus was underway and it began over a month ago.  

I arranged for a reservation of a party room at a Chinese restaurant Tash likes and then sent out invitations.

Next was sending out invitations, and surreptitiously contacting Tash's contacts that I knew, so I could get contact information for other friends of hers that they knew.  This took some doing.

I sent out the invite, stressing the need for secrecy.

RSVPs started coming in.

Then we hit a snag.  Tash announced she wanted all of us to leave for Toronto Friday to have her birthday with her mom.

That would not do.

We then had to carefully come up with excuses why she could not.

First we had Abby claim she had a seminar on Friday until 5pm that she had signed up for and could not get out of.  

I noted that I had already made family dinner plans at an undisclosed location.

Tash was suspicious, but agreed to not leave until today.

I then made arrangements for the cake, then met with the restaurant manager and got things further ironed out.

This week rolled around and the RSVPs suddenly poured in and we hit the capacity of the room at 42 people.

It would be tight but we would make it work.

Yesterday  morning it almost all went to heck, as one of her friends emailed her to wish her a happy birthday and they were sorry they couldn't make it.

What part of surprise did they not get exactly?

We smoothed it over by claiming we had invited them out to dinner with us for tonight and it seemed like she bought it.

So, yesterday afternoon I picked up the cake.  Then Leah and I headed to the restaurant while Tash picked up Abby.

I met the guests as they came in and ot it all organized. and got the appetizers and wine going. She was then 10 minutes out, then 5 minutes. . .then even more guests came who had not RSVP'd and we hit over 45 people, completely filling the room and adding another couple small tables.

Then I met her at the door and we then walked in, turned the corner to the party room and Surprise!

Surprise was achieved! Operation Sleepy Sloth was a smashing success.

She thought we had something going on but had no idea about the scale. Everyone had a great time.

The food at New Mandarin Garden was excellent as was the service. I think we made their night, as the restaurant was otherwise almost completely empty for St. Patrick's Day.

Our happy crowd more than made up for that.

That was a lot of fun to do.