My Family and Best Friend Threw a 50th Birthday Surprise Party for Me! (I am so honored!)

Yesterday was an amazing and wonderful day. I hope that you are lucky enough to have such a day in your life, too.

It started out as just a regular. I was doing individual speaking tests with my students and so I got out of work early. I spent the afternoon with Ethan (which I will write about later in this entry) and then we returned home to a totally unexpected 50th Birthday Surprise party. Earlier Ethan and I had cleaned the house a bit. I thought this was so that we could have a nice family dinner and that Ellie would be happier since the house would be clean. Little did I know why we were actually cleaning so much. I also thought there might be some sort of nice food since Ellie and Kohlton had banned me from entering certain parts of the house for a few days.

Here's what they were working on. They made everything from scratch. Ellie made the big, fancy flowers and some of the small flowers. Kohlton made a ton of the small flowers. Each one was painted by hand using small brushes, water and food coloring paste. (A friend tells us that it is better to use Vodka than water to do this job.) Don't you think the flowers are amazing?! I think the cake is reminiscent of Monet's Impressionism and the first Willy Wonka film.

The cake was so amazing that we almost did not feel like eating it, but we also knew it would not keep, so we enjoyed it with great gusto. I did remove the bigger flowers. I am hoping that I can figure out a way to save them. They are made of gumpaste, so I am not sure if I will be successful.

She also made a lovely banner. I love the mix of colors and textures. Ellie's are is usually much more pure and clean than my style and so I was impressed that she could put that aside to make decorations that are so much my style.

Ellie also decorated my little silver tree that Natalie had given me. The funny thing is that I was planning on redecorating it and now it is perfect.

Kohlton cleaned my stove - which I love.

Natalie went to my favorite restaurant for food. We had sesame chicken, Mongolian beef, pot stickers, egg rolls, chow mien and two kinds of rice. It was super tasty.

Ellie also made fancy tassles and decorated the cabinets.

Lots of our friends were there and we had a grand time visiting, eating and opening presents. (I am sorry that there are not any photos of people. Other people were taking those photos, so I will get them soon.)

Earlier in the day I also had a grand time with Ethan. He needed to go to Boulder and we wanted to spend some quality time together so I went with him. Remmie joined us, too.

We had lunch at Sherpa's, one of the places where I love to have a meal when I am in Boulder.

They have a silly fortune telling machine. I thought it was fun, but I did not put any money into the machine.

We went to REI to pick up a new backpack that Ethan needs as he is leaving for Thailand on Thursday. While we were there I picked up a new pair of socks and I was trying on a cute sweater, which Ethan purchased as a gift for me for my birthday. We also made a stop at Two Hand Paperie where I got a glass heart and two Field Notes notebooks for Ethan. He collects them and these are from the newest set that has gold gilding on the edges.

On our way home we stopped by the dog park to give Remmie a chance to get some exercise. Ethan ran around with him, so he got exercise, too.

During all of this driving we talked about a ton of different things and rocked out to fun music. We talked about his upcoming trip. We talked about the dogs. We discussed music and life. It was an awesome afternoon. I was impressed that Ethan was able to keep from hinting at the party that was gathering at the house.


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Here is a sampling of the soundtrack of my day: