greatest accomplishment ever!

To say that it's hard to surprise my husband is an understatement.  He takes great pride in this.  I on the other hand hate it.  

He can always guess what gifts are, what I'm thinking, where I am taking him.  Last Christmas I got him a keyboard and had it shipped to my parents' house.  He saw it under their tree twice before Christmas and I am quite certain he knew what it was.  I told him that if he guessed what it was (and was right) that I was going to send it back... 

In the 4 years we've been together (minus last week) I think that only time I managed to surprise him was with the engraving on the inside of his wedding ring.

That being said... Tanner's birthday was last week.  He turned the big 2-5.  

We had been meaning to re-roof our house and decided to start it last weekend (take off Friday and start putting on Saturday).  Tanner's birthday fell on that Friday.  Tanner isn't much for birthdays: actually he doesn't care for his at ALL.  I have been trying to change that...

About a week and a half before his birthday I decided that a surprise party was in order.  Considering his feelings about birthdays and how difficult it is to surprise him I was a little anxious.  We got up early to start taking the roof off.  I met him for lunch at Rigatoni's.  It was a pretty regular, boring birthday.  After work his dad and brother came over again to do a little more on the roof.  I went and borrowed my dad's truck to go get some shingles and tar paper from Home Depot. 

The party was scheduled for 8:00 at the swimming pool.  I know that if I just asked him to go swimming he would resist.  So I got my brother in on the plan.  He called Tanner and said that they were over swimming with my parents and wanted to give him a present before they headed home (they live a good 25 minutes from us).  My brother asked if Tanner was available to stop by to get the gift.  He said he could do that.  When he talked to me about it I told him I had my dad's truck with me and it would be great if we could swap cars back at the same time.  

I ran into trouble at Home Depot (that story to follow in another post) and 8:00 came and went.  We were behind schedule and Tanner was just going to go to the pool to get his 'present' from my brother without me.  I convinced him that I would be home very shortly from the store and would like to go with him to return my dad's truck.  We got to the pool around 8:30.  We pulled into the parking lot and there were cars everywhere (apparently there was an event going on [the pool shares a parking lot with a church building])  That actually turned out to be a great thing because he didn't recognize any cars.

I had texted my mom on the way over to the pool so she could get everyone ready for the surprise.  We walked in and everyone jumped out and yelled "SURPRISE!"  At first Tanner just looked around confused.  Then he saw all my family, his family, and friends and it sunk in.  He was actually surprised!  It was a miracle.  He was surprised!!!

We didn't get pictured of the actual surprise part.  In fact, I didn't even have my camera.  I did, however, get a few poor quality pictures on my phone:

Taking candles out of the cake.  I love how closely our 2 nephews in the background are watching!

Me eating some cotton candy.

One of our nephews munching away.   We had cake, nachos, watermelon, and cotton candy.  

Happy birthday to Tanner and happy surprising to me!