Surprise Party!

Have you ever tried to give someone a surprise party? If you have then you know the feeling of being hyper sensitive to everything that is said around the surprisee before the party takes place. My sister and I had scheduled our annual beach trip weekend, (my mom, Tori and I spend a weekend in Carlsbad every year.), and IMOM offered to send us to The La Costa Resort & Spa instead of the usual motel. I figured that since we were going to get to stay in such nice digs we should take advantage of the situation and throw my mom a party for her upcoming 70th birthday. I didn't think she would be suspicious because her birthday was not for another month.
I was able to get email addresses of her friends and Tori called the few who don't have email. I would have loved to seen Tori in stealth mode as she attempted to get in to my mom's drawer that holds her rolodex without my mom watching. She sits on the couch right next to the drawer so Tori had to wait until my mom left the room before she could even open the drawer. The fact that Paul didn't say, "HEY NANA! MOM IS WRITING DOWN PHONE NUMBERS FROM YOUR ADDRESS BOOK..." is nothing short of a miracle.

In the weeks between corresponding with my mom's friends and the actual party there were about 100 times when I almost offered updates on people I had no business talking to. My mom would say something about one of her friends and I caught myself getting ready to say, "Oh, when I talked to her the other day she said....." There were so many times that I started a sentence and then would just say..."I...I..I forgot what I was going to say..." Thankfully my mom never caught on or at least she acted like she didn't have a clue.

Tori and her kids and I went down to the resort in advance so we could see how big the rooms were. We thought we were so smart to do this in advance so that we would know for sure that we had enough space to hold a party. Sadly we were not as smart at we wanted to think we were because we did this on Memorial Day weekend. Not only could we have walked faster than we were going on the freeway...but there were no rooms available to be looked at. We decided that since there was nothing we could do at the resort then we would stop by the Carlsbad Flower Fields and take pictures of the kids. Imagine our surprise when we got to the gardens and saw that they had pulled every single one of their plants. There wasn't a flower to be seen for acres and acres.

I wound up having to make our reservations over the phone with the room sight unseen. The reservationist suggested that we use the Presidential Suite if we were planning on having a party. I told her that that sounded lovely however I was sure we couldn't afford anything that included the word "Presidential". She told me that the suite was discounted at 60% and I told her "We'll take it!"

We headed down to the resort on a Thursday evening. Tori's Escalade was packed to the gills which was a good thing because then my mom couldn't see the poster boards full of pictures or the bottles of alcohol. On the ride down there which was a little over an hour from my house...each one of the kids referenced.."When my dad comes down on Saturday...." and somehow it never registered with my mom that my brother in law isn't usually one to join us on our yearly get away. Even though this happened 4 times we thought we were still stealth and we were good to go.

When we got to the resort I went to the lobby and checked us in while the porter unloaded the truck. They have large golf carts that they use to take you to your room. It made us all feel very important and tres chic. Paul jumped in to the front seat with the driver and the rest of us squeezed in as best we could. We were heading down the sidewalk when the driver welcomed us to the resort and then said, "So, who's birthday is it?" We were all wide eyed and dead silent. Once again I was waiting for Paul to smile and say, "It's Nana's birthday!!", but he remained quiet and then we all started talking at once. I said, "It's Rebekah's birthday next week", then Rebekah said, "Yeah, my birthday is next week. I'm going to be 17.", then my mom said, "And my birthday is next month" and then Tori said, "But we're not here to celebrate a birthday this is just our yearly beach weekend." And then more dead silence. I was trying so hard not to just laugh and blurt out our secret but I remained calm.

The porter walked us to our room and before we even went inside the room we bunch of hayseeds were totally impressed.

Our room had mahogany double doors and they had tied a huge bow on the door handle. And let me tell you...if that impressed us...what we saw when we opened the door was enough for all of us to let out audible squeals of disbelief.....










Our room was beautiful. We stood in the foyer looking like a collective Bambi in headlights. The kids started running around and me and Tori and my mom just kind of stood and took it all in. This "suite" was bigger than my mother's house. It had two bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 5 closets, 5 telephones and 4 flat screen televisions.


(This television got the most attention because it was in the Roman style bathroom over looking the sunken jacuzzi style tub. The kids just couldn't get over the novelty of having a tv in the bathroom so they spent many hours sitting on the tile floor watching cartoons.)

On the bar there was a delightful plate of chocolate dipped strawberries and a card. I swiped the card and stuck it in my purse. When I had a moment of privacy I opened it up and sure enough it was a birthday card. Dodged another bullet.

Before I knew it the kids had devoured the strawberries AND the chocolates that were on all of the bed pillows. They were absolutely bouncing off the walls with excitement. As if having candy strategically placed through out the room wasn't fun enough...Jake found something that was even better. "MOM! AUNTIE!! Come and look at this little sink in the bathroom!!!" "Little sink"? Could it be that they accommodate little people in the Presidential Suite? Well...no. It was the bidet. Tori tried to explain to him how it was used and he was certain that she was making it all up. We tried so hard not to laugh at his reaction that I'm sure that is what made him think she was pulling his leg.

Part 2 to follow.