The Big Birthday Surprise

As some of you know, my very own Mr. Right (finally!) turned 30 yesterday.  And, being the scheming sort of SO that I am, I've been plotting for the last 6 months to pull off the surprise of the century.  Long story short -- it worked! 

The longer version is this:  Since we've only been in Colorado a couple of years, most of Mr. Right's good friends are in different parts of the country and he almost never gets to see them.  Last June, I snuck into his email account and stole the addresses of his best friend from elementary school, his best friend from high school, his college roommate and his good friend from work here.  I emailed all of them (who I mostly don't know at all) and invited them to come out for his birthday.  I figured if one of them showed up, it would be a screaming success.

With the exception of Elementary School Guy, all of them (!) agreed to come.  I rented us a house up in the mountains for the weekend, and everyone bought plane tickets.  And, while Mr. Right was visiting his folks after Thanksgiving, I cooked.  A lot.  I made 24 chocolate cupcakes (with cream filling and chocolate ganache on top), 2 lasagnas, 26 twice baked potatoes (to go with a couple of tri tips that I picked up) and 3 gallons of beef barley soup.  Phew!

Since the plan was to make Mr. Right think the house in the mountains was his birthday present, I froze all the food and stashed it at our friend A's house, since he was the only local attendee, so he could bring it with him and Mr. Right wouldn't be wondering why I was packing food for an army for our weekend in the mountains.

So on Thursday night, we headed up to this cute little house in the Rocky Mountains...

That even had a river out front.  It was almost frozen, but not quite, so we could still hear the rushing water...

Mr. Right was a happy guy...

And on Friday, High School Guy (Mr. Right's friend K) and his girlfriend, H. arrived...

I didn't know either of them at all.  And they turned out to be great -- super fun to hang around with just plain easy.  Yay!

A few hours later, College Guy E. and his girlfriend J. arrived (after a 3 hour flight delay)...

I know E. pretty well by now, and both he and J. are awesome.  They even got to stay an extra day and gave us an excuse to take Monday off.  Bonus!

Shortly after that, A. arrived, having hauled all of our food up the hill.  Awesome guy, A.  Here, he's demonstrating what happens when you complain about having your picture taken...

Sorry, A. 

All in all, a spectacular weekend.  There was plenty of Guitar Hero-ing...

and a ton of eating, but no pics of the food, sadly.  On Saturday, we went snowboarding with varying degrees of success.  It was my first time on a snowboard, but I did okay, mostly.  I made it down the bunny slope twice, and then down a much longer (but still green) run, all without any trips to the emergency room.  I consider that a smashing success.

On Sunday, we sent to a Christmas festival in one of our favorite teeny tiny Colorado towns -- Georgetown.  They close down the main street, and haul in reindeer...

And they have horse drawn carriage rides...

And a really cute little outdoor market.  Unfortunately, on Sunday they also had sustained winds blowing at around 60 mph.  It was enough to pick up Mr. Right's full coffee cup off the table and dump the whole thing onto my pants.  Boo.  Short visit to the Christmas festival this year.

Before we all said goodbye for the weekend, we decided to take a group photo.  So Mr. Right lined everyone up on the porch, and set up the timer on his camera on the footbridge.  He had 10 seconds to skitter up the slope (it had been snowing), run over to the porch, hop over the rail and stand next to me...

He didn't quite make it, which apparently I found hysterical.  Also, turns out the railing on the footbridge wasn't quite level. Hmmm.  Let's try again...

We set up again in a spot with easier access, and Mr. Right spent an eternity lining up the camera just right...

Better, but maybe a smidge off-center.  So I cropped it for him...

And no one will ever know. 
I'm super thankful that everything went so well, and everyone had a great time.  I'm also super thankful that it's over -- surprises are tiring!