vel's journaly thing

Yesterday was my dear husband's birthday. Happy 27th, ibanix!!! ^_^

Anyway, a long time ago he had mentioned how he would like to have a surprise birthday party sometime. I've never planned a surprise party before, but I thought I'd give it a try. How hard could it be, right?

He had already asked to go out for sushi for his birthday dinner. I thought "well that's easy, I'll just invite a bunch of other people to dinner and be at the restaurant to surprise him!" So I made a reservation with the sushi place next door to us we haven't been to yet and sent out a bunch of online invites a little over a week before his birthday. Unfortunately I don't really have any email addresses of his friends, so I had to see what I could hunt down off of lj/wedding guest list/past evites/his cell phone. I think I managed pretty well, except a number of his friends either don't have their email addresses anywhere or he doesn't have their phone numbers. So it was kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not they'd even see the invitation/I could call them up. Most of his friends were unable to come. =( But I did manage to round up 8 people (friends/family) to make it on Friday night.

But then! Two days before his birthday he emails me at work and says "hey let's go to this other sushi place I like instead"! So I have to rush email/call everyone and let them know that the location has changed!! Thankfully they were all able to get the message in time, so they knew to go to the new restaurant. But it doesn't end there.

On the day of his birthday, he emails me again to say he'll be working late, "I'll meet you at the restaurant right at 8." Okay...no problem, I had told everyone to get there by 7:45 in order to be early enough to surprise him. And since I didn't want to drive all the way home then all the way back up to the restaurant if we weren't going together, I just stayed at work late as well.

I left work a little after 7 so I could get the restaurant really early and have plenty of time to make sure things were taken care of before he was supposed to get there at 8. But then disaster strikes! As I'm driving over there, Josh calls me and says "hey traffic wasn't as bad as I thought, I'll be there in about 10 minutes"!!! What?! It was only 7:20!! And since I'm completely incapable of lying on my toes, so the only thing I could think of to say was "ummmm...okay..." We were both already on the road, and I couldn't think of any excuse that would delay him long enough for the guests to get there before he did.

I ended up getting to the restaurant a little after 7:30 and was shown to our table set for 10. I put my present down and went back to the entrance to wait for Josh, who got there about 5 minutes later. So it was only 7:40, and I tried to stall around by saying our reservation was for 8, but he could easily see that there were plenty of open tables and there shouldn't be any reason why we couldn't be seated. Finally I gave up and brought him over to our table. Of course that was when the light went off when he saw all the chairs "Oh!!" That was also when our guests started arriving and he was surprised and happy to see who all came. So it was a sort of success in that he was definitely surprised, just not in the way I had wanted! Oh well. =/

The food was delicious! And they had all kinds of awesome rolls to choose from. I had my favorite, a catepillar roll, plus their calamari roll and tamago roll. Josh had the crispy dragon roll, tuna roll, and then one of their specials, the Pirates of the Caribbean roll. This thing was HUGE, and by that time he couldn't finish it. The chef also made a sort of "birthday cake" out of stacked California rolls to share with everyone. It was all really yummy! All in all I'd have to say the dinner was a success. =)

( Pictures! )