Yesterday we surprised him with a birthday party. Mom came up with the idea and had been planning it for weeks. Our rouse was a family photo session, and because it would've been pretty tricky to prepare for a party at his house, the party was thrown at our house. We live back off the road and unless the Quack is checking cows (which does happen daily), he wouldn't notice the party prep going on. (It's always good to have an excuse to get things done around the place, you know.)
It has been so funny trying to sneak around to make the preparations for this party. Last week, after a morning of dove hunting, the Quack was dropping Jay off at our house when my brother pulls up with his gas grill. He unloads it and tells Jay that I said Jay could fix it. Jay is perplexed. He looks the grill over and says he'll see what he can do...dad walks to his truck and my brother says, "That's all I could think of!" Ah-ha, it took a while, but Jay finally caught on.
Saturday mom bought some supplies at Walmart while we were at a volleyball tournament because dad had to do something else and couldn't go. On her way home, she was going to drop the stuff off at our house. Jay & I were just pulling out of our driveway to go to Lane's football game when dad pulled up on the mule (no, not the four-legged type) and asked where mom was, she wasn't answering her phone. I assured him that she was on her way home from the tournament, she had stayed a little longer than I did.
I roll the window up and tell Jay that I hope he turns around and goes home (and not back to our house like normal) because mom is on her way with the supplies. Thankfully, dad did turn around to go home. We turn the opposite direction of my parent's house and meet my mom, who had driven the long way around to avoid driving past her house on her way to my house. She stayed down in the dip in the road at the neighbor's until she could see dad pull into their driveway and then proceeded to our house to unload.
We met at the pond over on the family farm for pictures at 3:30. Our guests were to arrive at our house by 4:30 and we hoped to be there by 5. I guess no one had communicated to my brother the timeline and it was hilarious that he kept making comments like, well, I have an appointment with my couch soon, I think that's enough pictures, etc. All the while mom and I are saying, oh, we should probably go somewhere else and get some different pictures. My dad then starts rushing everything because he thinks Mark really needs to be somewhere. Finally, I whisper to Mark the timing situation. It was so funny because suddenly he was wanting more pictures. Our photographer knew what was up so she went with it.
Mom made signs and had them up and down the driveway greeting our guests and the birthday boy. Mom said dad noticed the first one, flew past the second one too quick to read and by the time he reached the third one, he was picking up on something. He said he thought it was a church party until he saw "Phil's" truck. Somehow he had no idea. We pulled off a big surprise.
The Quack parked way down at the end of the line of cars parked along the driveway so this was the best picture my friend could capture. I'm hoping our photographer grabbed a couple too. (I'm so bummed I didn't walk around and take pictures during the party!)
Lucky for our guests, we were pig-free as of last Tuesday, and no stinky odors were looming. And as of Saturday mid-afternoon we were bee-free, thanks in part to Jay being stung 18 times and torching a couple nests. (Thankfully, he is not allergic to them.) Jay set up the camper television for the football junkies and everyone positioned their chairs around that. Heaven forbid, we sacrifice Sunday NFL. We had a new fire ring to try out and it proved to be functioning. By sunset, the fire felt pretty good.
There were 55 people there (if my calculation is accurate) and the weather was perfect. A big thanks to my aunt, uncle and the Spank for grilling and getting everything set up and ready while we were taking pictures.
I think a good time was had by all. And hopefully we got one decent family photo out of it :)
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