I've told a lot of lies to the one I love

.... that totally sounds like a Country Song...  Lucky for you, we are not about to get twangy in here, but rather, I want to talk about my Love's Coming of Old Age Party!  My wonderful husband Ben turned 30 on Jan 21st, and I took it upon myself to throw him a celebration that he will remember for years to come!  Shortly after he turned 29, he asked me "what can I do for my 30th that will pay homage to the last 30 years?"  And I told him "you can let me plan it".  I had already been working on ideas for him (yes a year in advance), and I really wanted to do something really special for him! 

Ben signed over the planning to me, with his only knowledge being that there would be a party, and with his birthday conveniently falling on a Saturday, that that would be the day.  Everything else, I quite successfully kept him in the dark on.

Now here's the tricky part - Ben and I not only live together (as married people often do) but we work together too.  That means we see each other 24/7.  Planning surprises for someone when you are never apart is difficult to say the least - luckily, I got by with a little help from my friends. 

Ben is hard to surprise.  He asks a lot of questions, and he's very inquisitive.  He's also very logical, and picks up on things quite quickly.  If there was an award for putting two and two together, Ben may not win, but he would be a close second.  Which is why it's quite difficult to pull one over on him, and I spent the last 10 or so months, worrying that he would figure out what I was up to, and his surprise would be ruined.  It was a stressful 10 months to say the least! 

I told a lot of lies.  Lots of them.  It was the only way.  I avoided saying "I'm doing birthday stuff"  or "you'll ruin your surprise" as much as possible, because something like that would just set the wheels in motion a little faster, and I'm sure he would figure out what I was trying to do. 

For Ben's birthday, I had 2 big surprises planned for him.  The first, was his Birthday Gift.  You see Ben has a 1972 Duster named Gold Member that he loves more than anything else he owns.  And for years he has been offering his car up to photographers that I've worked with to try to get someone to use it in a shoot so he could get some photos of it.  I knew I wanted to do something in regards to his car, but I didn't know if I just wanted a car photoshoot - I wanted to go for something a little more personal.  Enter Melissa. 

As I mentioned in other posts, I had met Melissa in and around May, and we became friends, and as with any new friendship, you spend some time facebook stalking them just to get a little insite on what they are about.  What I found with Melissa is sheer talent.  Not only is she an awesome Photographer, but through some sleuthing, I discovered she's also a phenomenal artist as well! 

Suddenly it all clicked - I could hire Melissa to paint a picture of Ben's car to go up in our new house!  After talking to Melissa about it, she was thrilled to oblige, and we got to work planning the logistics  (this is now July).  See the problem is, I can't drive Ben's car.  Ever.  I'm not allowed to.  Ben had to sign a paper with our insurance company stating that he is the only one who will be driving Gold Member.  Which poses a problem, because as delightful as our new garage is, it doesn't exactly create a sparkling canvas to capture the beauty of Ben's car in.  Enter Ben's Parents. 

Dad is co-owner of Gold Member, and thus, the only other person in Edmonton authorized to drive her.  So naturally I needed to enlist his help in pulling off this surprise!  In talking to dad, he agreed to help me out but we now needed to figure out when, and how, and where.  The Plan was to get Gold Member, and drive out to a farm somewhere and have Melissa take pictures of her in the grain, as Gold Member has the most beautiful gold shimmer, and I knew she would just sparkle in contrast.  However Edmonton decided it needed to rain all summer, so our window of opportunity was greatly diminishing with each storm cloud that rolled up, especially since we can't drive Gold Member in the rain, and Ben takes the Insurance off of her in the Fall to store her for winter. So we were down to only 2 months and 8 Saturdays and Sundays to pull this off.

There was also the little matter of Gold Member living in our garage, and Ben might notice if she is missing one day.  I was initially thinking that we could all get up really early and take the car when Ben was out hunting one morning, and have it back before he comes back home at 12, but that didn't seem like a very fun plan, and we were dealing with a very limited window, and if Ben ends up filling all of his quota in the first hour, he might be home a lot sooner than expected, so we couldn't count on that window of time. 

Then I remembered that now and then Dad will keep Gold Member for a couple of weeks in the summer, so he can take her out and go for drives and such, so I asked Dad to request to bring Gold Member home for a week at the end of August.  Perfect.

I was originally thinking that I could say I had a shoot to do with Melissa, but then I would need to botch my company records to account for the non existent photo shoot, but Melissa came up with a better plan, and suggested I tell Ben I was helping her re-paint her studio!  Awesome!  He bought it!

We decided that on my birthday, August 27th, Dad would take Gold Member home at the end of the night, and I would "help Melissa paint" on the 28th, and we could do the shoot, and he would never know!   And then Ben threw a wrench in the plans. 

On the day of my Birthday, Ben decided that he wasn't ready to give Gold Member up that night, and decided that he would tell his parents that we would just drive the car out to them on Wednesday instead of them taking it that night.  Crap.  "Yeah, sure, we could do that" Crap Crap Crap. 

When Mom and Dad arrive, I pull Mom into the bedroom to frantically explain that no matter what Ben says, they HAVE to take the car that night.  So Mom, being the quick thinker that she is came up with a story about how they had a date planned the next day, and she was excited to go for a drive in Gold Member and get an ice cream.  Meanwhile Dad opted for guilt and exclaimed "Look, you've had the car all summer, I don't think I'm being unrealistic in asking for it for a week!"  Eventually they won out, and Ben gave in.  (YES!!)

Then the other wrench.  Ben turns to me and says:  "Oh, well then can I just drive you to Melissa's so I can have the car?"  The very car that I was going to use to pick up Melissa, and drive to Fort Sask in?  "Sure that will work, it's not like I need the car to paint, if you want to drop me off and pick me up, that's no problem"  And if that was what I was doing, it wouldn't have been a problem.  Crap in a Hat!  You are a difficult one Mr. Thieson.

Luckily, Ben had his own surprise for my Birthday, and my Mom walked through the door - a surprise guest from Calgary! 

After a very hush hush conversation with my mom, we figure out, that I will tell Ben, that since Mom is heading back to Calgary that morning anyway I would get her to drop me off on her way out of the city, and Ben could just pick me up to take me home later!  Beauty!!  In actually my very gracious Mom did drive me to Melissa's, and then drove us both to Mom and Dad's place in Fort Sask before heading out on the Highway.  (Bless her!  I honestly have no idea what I would have done otherwise!!) 

After finding the most perfect place for a photo shoot, and Melissa's shutter snapping hundreds of shots, Mom T drove Melissa and I back to Melissa's house, where we dipped into her studio paints and properly drizzled and smudged the right colors on the paint clothes I was sporting.  Then I messaged Ben to let him know that Melissa and I were finished painting, and he could come get me.  Ahhhh - so far, we pulled it off - but this is only August 28th, I still need to keep this secret for another 5 months!

Which is really hard to do... 

Especially when Melissa sent me a couple edited photos so I could choose one!  I tell Ben everything, and it was really really really really REALLY Hard not to show him this:

Melissa is Amazing. 

So while Melissa got to work painting this amazing photo onto a canvas, I got to work on Ben's second surprise. 

Remember when he had asked me what he could do to pay homage to the last 30 years?  I came up with just the thing - I asked all of Ben's friends and family to record a little video clip re-telling a favorite memory of Ben that I would put together on a DVD for him.  I thought he would love this, because he has a horrible memory, and this way, he could re-live those events that made the people in his life smile (that he's probably forgotten), and he could also look back at the DVD for years to come too and reminisce.

What I got, however, was more than I had expected, as nearly EVERYONE I had invited sent me some sort of clip or birthday greeting, and watching them all put a smile on my face a mile wide.  My theatre friends back in Calgary even put together a documentary called "Edmonton Needs Women"!!  At one point after receiving countless emails with video files one night, I gave Ben a big hug and said "you are a lucky man, you are very loved".  He agreed with me without knowing why I said it - but in watching the video - he gets it.

As well, to kick off the video, I discovered the wonders of iMovie's "Movie Trailer" templates, and created this for Ben:

For his party, I wanted to incorporate as much of "Ben" into the theme as I could, so myself, and Ben's awesome parents went on a quest for posters that we could decorate the walls with.  We wanted a NIN poster, an Arnold Schwarzenegger (thank God my spell check knows how to spell his damn name), Aliens, or any sort of Sigourney Weaver poster, COD, movies - really anything.  We ended up with Arnie, COD, Batman Characters, and Captian America posters.  Clearly Ben isn't the only one who likes Nine Inch Nails, as we went to several different stores, and everyone was sold out.  As well I had the Italian Center cater, and ordered several trays of some of his favorite foods.  Sister Darrel-Lynne helped me out huge by picking up the food on the day of, and I enlisted the help of Erik to get Ben out of the house so I could edit the video, and film my own "memory" clip.

Finally, the day arrived!

We kicked off the Birthday celebrations by hitting up T&T for some Dim Sum, followed by a period of nothingness (I think I watched TV while he played video games??!)  Then once my mom, and his parents arrived, I got Ben to open his gift, and filmed his reaction.  (Ben doesn't like to be the center of attention, so I didn't want to make him open the gift in front of 50 of his closest friends and family).  He was shocked!  And clearly very very surprised!!  He said it wasn't what he was expecting at all!  (Huge sigh of relief!!) He also said he couldn't figure out how I had managed to pull that off either!  Whew!!  Here's the happy man with his amazing new art work:

Unfortunately my cell phone pictures just don't do it justice, it really is something you have to see first hand.  Melissa is amazing.  I can't say it enough. 

Later on, once everyone had arrived, and the party was in full swing, I called everyone down stairs to watch the videos, making sure Ben had a seat front and center.  Thankfully, he had no idea what was going to happen either, and he loved every second of it - he even got a little choked up at some points!  The next morning, he watched it again.  

All in all I couldn't have asked for the day to have gone better, and Ben repeatedly thanked me for days after.  And I'm so glad I was able to make his 30th Birthday a happy memorable one.  He deserves it.  I know that there is no way I could have done all that without the help of my friends and family who stepped up and either distracted him with shiny things, or helped me run around town to pull this off!!  So HUGE Props to all of the amazing people in my life who stepped up to help me out, just to show Ben how important he is to us, and let him know, that we wholeheartedly celebrate the day of his birth. <3 <3 <3

Happy 30th Birthday Ben!!    xxoo