You May Be 40...

Because Doug and his best friend (and BIL) turn 40 within a month of each other my sister and I decided to throw a combined 40th birthday party for them.

We rented the 4 lane mini bowling alley at InPlay (click Galleries and search for the Bowling Alley to see photos of the room) and began planning- about 6 months ago. It's not easy to get contact info out of a man without being sneaky... And we got our brothers involved; they took Doug & Jon out for "guy's night".

Jen and I printed posters and ordered cake. Everything was planned perfectly, although I was afraid that Doug was on to me when I slipped and mentioned that the babysitter (who is also my cousin) would be coming over Saturday night. Quickly I made up a story about her being grounded and her parents asked if she could come over. Whew!

Justin collected the guys shortly after 5pm and then Jen & I hurriedly got ready and went to get the cake. Looks nice, yes? Well, look closer... See how the "may be" are just a bit too close together? And the "e" looks a bit funny? When I arrived to pick it up it didn't say "may be" it said "mayby". All one word- and not even spelled correctly. I looked at the kid -who couldn't have been over 17- in the bakery and said, "This isn't right."

He gave me a deer in the headlights look.

So, again, I said, "This isn't right. Is there a bakery manager here?"

He stammered and finally managed to spit out that he was the only one there.

Seeing that he was pretty much worthless to help me, I took charge. "I need a scraper, the blue icing and some white frosting. And a manager."

I'm pretty sure I scared him as he practically ran to the phone to page a manager. When the manager arrived- after 10 minutes- I told him the same thing. They finally got what we needed and I did the scraping and Jen made the "e". Oh, and we got the cake for 1/2 price. (The manager offered it for free but I didn't feel right about that...)

Running half an hour late, we headed for the party and got set up. Posters on the doors and over the cake. Fruit and cheese trays out and guests being welcomed.

About 7:45 the guys arrived. And wondered jut why my brothers were leading them into a room that instead of toward the games. They didn't notice the fun signs on the doors...

Amazingly we pulled it off! They were totally clueless! The biggest surprise for Doug was that his brother and nephew drove up from Dallas...

Much fun was had by all...

Justin worked on his bowling technique...


And the guys pretended they were bikers...

To see how well we pulled it off, watch the video...